‘Snow White’ Review: Rachel Zegler IS the Fairest of Them All in Marc Webb’s Fairytale Remake [C+]

For the past decade, the Walt Disney Company has been pillaging its back catalog of animated films, turning them into gaudy, garish live-action spectacles that mostly lack the heart and soul of the originals. Unlike the live-action cartoon that was 1996’s 101 Dalmatians (why it took nearly twenty years to get Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella after the bucketfuls of money Dalmatians made will forever be a mystery), the recent spate of live-action remakes have devoted themselves to slavishly recreating the look of the animated originals in a world where verisimilitude is prized above all else. This has led to the uncanny valley of Jon Favreau’s The Lion King, Bill Condon’s lumbering, ornately tacky Beauty and the Beast, and Niki Caro’s dull, song-less Mulan, among others. None of these films have been able to recreate the magic of the animated originals, settling for the proxy magic of warm nostalgia. It’s not an enviable position for Disney and the artists working on these films – stick too closely to the original and the new film will be derided as a pale imitation, but stray too far and you lose what made the original special in the first place, alienating the millions of fans the originals have accrued over the decades – but this a problem of their own making.

For decades, Disney was happy to re-release their animated films in theaters once every few years, constantly bringing in millions of dollars without creating anything new. But now that the company’s creative well has run dry, they needed “new” material from somewhere, and why not recreate their past animated glories in live action? Cinderella still stands as the best of these films a decade after its release, mostly because Branagh did not care about recreating the original film exactly, instead carefully calibrating everything to match its new medium and new audience. Unfortunately, Disney hasn’t been able to find that balance again, coming closest with Favreau’s tonally confused The Jungle Book (or David Lowery’s unassuming Pete’s Dragon, if you decide that a remake of a live-action/animation hybrid using CGI to replace the animation counts). Despite the terrible track record of these films, hope still springs eternal, and when Disney finally announced that they were remaking the film that started it all, you could be forgiven for thinking that maybe this time, they would finally get it right.

Marc Webb’s live-action Snow White begins how most Disney Animated Classics (™) begin: With a beautiful book opening to reveal the start of the story we’re about to see unfold onscreen. It’s a nice nod to the film’s source material, the first full-length animated feature film produced by Walt Disney in 1937. It diverges from that source material pretty quickly, but why shouldn’t it? 1937 and 2025, nearly a century apart, are different times and thus require different stories. Snow White (Emilia Faucher as a girl, Rachel Zegler as a young woman), so named for being born in the middle of a snowstorm, is the princess of a happy storybook kingdom. You know it’s a happy storybook kingdom because the King and Queen (Hadley Fraser and Lorena Andrea) are benevolent leaders who mix and mingle with their peasants, who always have smiles on their faces despite living in relative poverty. They raise their daughter to be fearless, fair, brave, and true – the qualities they see as belonging to a good leader (never mind that two of those are synonyms of each other). But when the Queen dies, a usurper comes to their kingdom in the form of the fairest woman in all the land (Gal Gadot), who only cares about her own beauty and power. Believing that her unmatched beauty elevates her above everyone else, she sends the King out on a mission to quell an uprising to the South from which he never returns, and takes over the throne, forming the citizenry into an army of guards and relegating Snow White to being a glorified chambermaid. When this Evil Queen’s magic mirror (Patrick Page) tells her that she has been surpassed as the fairest in the land, she orders a huntsman to kill Snow White, but he can’t go through with it, and the princess ends up running away to the house of seven mining dwarves in a magical forest. Will she be able to find the ruler within herself and bring kindness and happiness back to her kingdom, or will the Evil Queen find her and ensure that she never wakes up to her full potential?

While her casting caused fits of rage from the literal-minded rubes who can’t see past her skin color, Rachel Zegler once again makes good on the promise she displayed in 2021’s West Side Story remake. She’s always been a natural onscreen, with charisma to burn and a gorgeously robust singing voice, but she’s matured considerably as a performer in the past few years. This is her trickiest role to date, having to play a fairy tale princess who still comes across as relatable to the young women of 2025. She nails it, perfectly combining the sweet countenance of her animated counterpart with a fire all her own. Despite the unmistakably modern political views this princess holds, Zegler never feels out of place in this world; whether she’s teaching the dwarves how to clean their cottage, staring down Ansu Kabia’s huntsman as he holds his blade out to kill her, or arguing with the Robin Hood-like bandit Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) about the best way to govern, Zegler’s ability to juggle different tones while never losing the character’s soul is impressive for one so early in their career. Her performance brings to mind another well-balanced modernized take on the fairy tale princess, Drew Barrymore in Ever After, perfectly combining the wistful guilelessness of the princess archetype with the quick wit and sharp mind of 21st-century women. It’s a marvel of a performance, and to the extent that the film works, it’s largely because she’s such a vibrant, well-rounded lead.

Sadly, Zegler must play opposite a group of CGI dwarves straight out of the Uncanny Valley, as well as Gadot, who’s still trying to find the charismatic power she had in 2017’s Wonder Woman and then promptly lost. She certainly cuts a striking figure here, especially in Sandy Powell’s form-hugging bejeweled gowns, which draw your eye right to her regally placid face. Gadot is clearly trying to follow in the footsteps of Charlize Theron, who played this role in 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman (from which this film borrows imagery more than once) as an evil, icy diva just over-the-top enough to be fabulous in a mostly unfabulous movie. Gadot doesn’t have Theron’s range, though, and she flounders. She looks fabulous, yes, but she doesn’t sound it, and Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winners Benj Pasek & Justin Paul have given her two new songs to sing. Falling victim to the same fate as Beauty and the Beast’s Emma Watson, Gadot’s untrained voice hits the notes (with some digital assistance) but lacks the feel for phrasing that actual singers provide. She tries with all her might to tear into her big villain number, “All Is Fair,” but she doesn’t have the tools necessary to turn it into the all-out camp classic she’s aiming for. No matter how much she commits vocally, her face betrays her, unable to match the grandly campy, villainous gestures the role calls for. She’s good in the character’s more subtle moments – explaining her ruling ethos to Snow White by contrasting the beauty of a fragile rose with that of a hard diamond or, curiously, as the old hag convincing Snow White to eat the poisoned apple – but these are few and far between, leaving a bit of a void where the film’s villain is supposed to be.

Not that Snow White necessarily needs a strong villain. This is a fairytale, after all, and archetypal characters are par for the course. Thankfully, Erin Cressida Wilson’s screenplay doesn’t try to delve into the Evil Queen’s character, apart from some vague allusions to weak men. Finally, a family film that does not psychoanalyze its villain, instead simply letting them be evil, just as they usually are in children’s stories. This doesn’t diminish the film one iota, mostly since the parallels between the Evil Queen’s rule and the current state of America are blatantly obvious without ever calling attention to themselves. Because of this, the film’s message about leading from a place of love and kindness instead of a place of hate and self-preservation feels especially poignant and wonderful to see, especially in a film aimed at families with young children. The youngest in the audience might not fully grasp the political relevance, but the film doesn’t hold back on its messaging and might even wake up some minds (hope still springs eternal).

Director Marc Webb allows the story’s fairytale roots to guide his directorial vision, keeping everything as simple as possible. The film’s look is softly romantic and lightly fantastical, leaning heavily on golden-hued sunlight to give everything a magical glow. Kave Quinn’s production design shies away from the ornately intricate designs of past live-action Disney princess films, keeping things nicely in the more pastoral realm of the original. Powell’s costumes occasionally look like Renaissance Faire leftovers, but they have a similar simple quality to them that is ultimately quite charming. Even the scenes that call for heavy use of CGI keep things simple – just some purple smoke surrounding the Evil Queen as she transforms herself and poisons the apple, some glowing gems in the dwarves’ mine, and some lightly anthropomorphized animals. The only real visual blot on the film is the CGI used for the seven dwarves, which looks amazingly detailed at a glance, but as soon as any of the dwarves stand still for more than a second, their unreality becomes blatantly apparent.

Snow White is more clearly made for children than most of the other Disney live-action remakes, and its focus on being a fairytale helps with that goal. This is a simple story that anyone can understand and enjoy, with a cheer-worthy lead and some catchy, if unmemorable, new songs. If it never reaches the heights of the great cinematic fairytales, at least it doesn’t sink as low as most of the other films of its ilk churned out by Disney over the past decade. Webb gets the job done with minimal muss and fuss, and whenever Zegler is onscreen, the film manages to conjure up some of that good old Disney magic. Even the youngest children will be entertained, if not downright enchanted, and adults won’t feel left out or pandered to. The film threads the needle about as well as it possibly could, which is impressive even if it doesn’t mean the film is actually great. You may not be whistling on your way out of the theater, but at least watching Snow White doesn’t feel like work.

Grade: C+

Walt Disney Pictures will release Snow White only in theaters on March 21.

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Daniel Bayer

Daniel Bayer has been in love with movies all his life, in love with the theater since he could sit still, and in love with tap dance since seeing Singin' in the Rain at nine years old. A nationally-ranked dancer in his teens, his theater credits are many and varied, both behind and on the stage. He now spends his days as a non-profit database manager and the rest of his time seeing, writing about, and talking about movies and theater. He is a proud member of GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. You can find him on the AwardsWatch and Next Best Picture podcasts, and on Twitter @dancindanonfilm.

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