608: Snow White

[00:00:00] Hello everybody, welcome back to the Film Buds Podcast. This is episode number 608, and my name is Henry. This time around, I'm going to be tackling Snow White from 2025, and it's directed by Mark Webb, who did 500 Days of Summer and the amazing Spider-Man films. It stars Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot, Amelia Foucher, Andrew Burnap, and the synopsis is,

[00:00:26] a princess joins forces with seven dwarves and a group of rebels to liberate her kingdom from her cruel stepmother, the evil queen. My wife wanted to go see this in theaters way back when, and we did, and it was a not-so-great experience for a number of reasons, including just a very obnoxious audience. While I wasn't really looking that forward to it, I do really like Disney films,

[00:00:51] I like live-action reboots and remakes. I don't have a problem with that. I know that she is pretty divisive. I'm not a huge Rachel Zegler fan. I think her best performance by far is still West Side Story, but otherwise I find her to be very inconsistent musically. I think she's very, very talented, but in this film and Hunger Games, lots of her emotional beats. I think her eyes just kind of look glazed over.

[00:01:18] I'm just not getting much from her emotionally in terms of anything resonating. Along with her, I know that a lot of people hate on Gal Gadot, and I don't have an issue with her acting overall. Like, I like her as Wonder Woman, and I've seen her in a few other things that I like her in, but for whatever reason, she is just terrible. Her singing is so off-key. Her physicality is goofy. She's not scary. One thing at least I look forward to is the villain, and if the villain is not good,

[00:01:46] it's a big problem. I still think Snow White and the Huntsman with Kristen Stewart is by far the best of the Snow White films, and just honestly very underrated. I wish more of the newer fantasy blockbusters would be more like that one. Besides her performance, I can't remember the last time I actively hated a hairstyle in a movie that actually made me annoyed, and I know that Snow White's hairstyle is taken from the original animated film, but it looks so out of place.

[00:02:15] I could not take anything she said seriously, and even the quality of that wig did not look great. It had a budget around $250 million, and the CGI looks horrendous. I just don't understand where all that money went. I guess it didn't help that the film was shot in very, very high-key lighting, so all the flaws, any kind of shading or shadows that can help hide

[00:02:40] problems was non-existent. All of the dwarves were very boring, both performance-wise, writing-wise. I didn't mind most of the songs, like Whistle While You Work, Hey Ho. Those were fun, so there were moments that I was entertained and not hating it. I know one of the reasons that Rachel Zegler kind of got hate for this is that she was saying, you know, this movie is not about her falling in love with the prince,

[00:03:07] and there is no prince in this. It's about her becoming a leader. And, you know, in a way, that's fine. I want there to be strong female characters in films like this, especially for kids growing up. And Kristen Stewart didn't really have a true prince in that film either. But if you're remaking a film, why not do it in the classic way that it was told? We don't need her to be falling head over heels, and that's the whole story. But why not have this great love story between these two people,

[00:03:35] and have her show this leadership for her kingdom? I don't know why they couldn't have both. So, at least to me, that was a mistake. Let me know if you disagree. Another thing about the original is the runtime was only maybe an hour 10, maybe less, if I'm not mistaken. And this is 90 to 100 minutes. I still think at that length, it felt long. Like there is so little to no narrative or plot. And that's not inherently

[00:04:02] a bad thing, but when you don't have a lot of strong supporting elements, you notice that immediately. The production design was strong, the makeup was pretty good, and I did like the look of the evil queen as the old witch, and that poison apple sequence, that was good. Light, one and a half out of five.