Movie Review: "Snow White and the Huntsman" (2012)

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Movie: "Snow White and the Huntsman"
Director: Rupert Sanders
Year: 2012
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 7 minutes

After her evil stepmother Ravenna (Charlize Theron) murders her father and takes control of his kingdom, Snow White (Kristen Stewart) is locked away in the castle tower for many years. Once Snow White grows more beautiful than Ravenna, the wicked queen decides to have her murdered, too. However, Snow White escapes the clutches of her wicked stepmother and raises an army of those who were loyal to her father in an attempt to overthrow the evil queen. 

"Snow White and the Huntsman" is a re-imagining of the classic Snow White fairy tale. This film is directed by Rupert Sanders in his feature film debut, and his inexperience seems to have shown quite a bit with this offering. Visually, though, this is quite a stunning movie. The art direction, some of the CGI, the makeup, and the costumes are all downright gorgeous. Each scene gets a chance to tell an intricate, cool story with its awesome visuals and cinematography. What it lacks as a whole is gravitas. There is a massive lack of emotional weight to everything happening on screen. Some of this is caused by its messy, shambled script, and some of it is caused by its ineffective acting. With a bevy of beautiful visuals, we expect to have at least a small sense of wonder for such a story, but for some reason, this never comes to fruition.

We have a rule when we write our reviews that we don't like to talk about how actors look in our blog posts because we think it's pretty trashy and doesn't usually have anything to do with movies themselves. Go to TMZ for that kind of reaction. Unfortunately, we are going to break our rule. Whatever idiot thought Kristen Stewart was "fairer" than Charlize Theron must have been having been smoking something pretty strong...either that, or they were having an affair with her........oh, wait.......Stewart stars as Snow White, fresh off her stint as Bella Swan in the "Twilight" series. As per usual, Stewart offers up the same emotional range here as she did in those sparkly vampire films, only this time, she does so with a rather unconvincing British accent. Chris Hemsworth plays the Huntsman and is serviceable in this action-centered part. Hemsworth alone has not been a huge box office draw, so when paired with power houses like Stewart and Theron, well, let's just say he caught a lucky break. Speaking of Charlize Theron, it is her who steals the show as the evil queen Ravenna. Theron is most certainly the best part of this film and is able to rise slightly above its overall mediocrity. She gets a chance to flex her own British accent, which is much more convincing and less distracting as Stewart's. Covered in gold makeup or dipped in milky white goo or cloaked in black, Theron shows what it means to be a crazy badass in a world that doesn't really know what it wants to say or be or where it wants to go. She makes "Snow White and the Huntsman" tolerable.

The biggest problem with this movie is the lack of cohesion overall. The tale takes itself way too seriously, but isn't really rooted in seriousness. The chemistry between characters is basically nonexistent. Once again, we don't believe Stewart in this role, and we don't believe her to be fairer than Theron whatsoever. We also don't buy that Stewart's Snow White is so beautiful and so pure of heart, she can tame a rampaging troll with a look. "Snow White and the Huntsman" is also inexplicably too long to the point where it begins to feel like an absolute dull drudgery about 30 minutes into its run time. It takes too long to get to its point, and by the time it does, we just don't care. Overall, there are a lot of missed opportunities here. Even though Theron is brilliant and the makeup, costumes, and effects are fun to look at on the big screen, there are still many times where things happen and either don't make sense within this story or are simply unnecessary.

My Rating: 5.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 5/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.1/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 48%
Do we recommend this movie: Meh.
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One year ago, we were watching: "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2"