Don't flatter yourself.

I went and saw Snow White and the Huntsman on Monday night with my sisters and a friend of mine, and despite the fact I had been looking forward to the film for months and so wanted to like it, I just didn't. But the film was just really disappointing, on so many levels.

1. All I could think throughout the course of Snow White and the Huntsman can be summed up thusly: the film is so much less than the sum of its parts. On paper, it sounds amazing: a "feminist" retelling of the Snow White tale with a dark bent, with an interesting and (for the most part) charismatic cast and a unique and impressive visual style. Well, the film had all these elements, or at least the promise of them - but the script was so pedantic, dull, and utterly lifeless and lacking in any sort of spark that the film was completely undone as a result.


2. Not that a poor script was was the film's only undoing - perhaps the greatest villan of the piece, even more so than Charlize Theron's nefarious Queen Ravenna, was the overuse of completely unnecessary and distracting CGI. I read somewhere that the film's budget was upwards of $170 million, and as such the studio (Universal) was leery of a flop following in the footsteps of something like Battleship or John Carter. Thankfully, the film hasn't flopped, but after seeing it, I really and truly think they could have easily cut $50-70 million from the CGI budget and the film would have still been beautiful and striking, probably even more so with less special effects. For one, the CGI "fairies" in the film were completely unnecessary and incredibly poorly done. I couldn't help but think of Fern Gully when I saw them, for some reason. Instead, the film would have been done a much greater service if a decent script had been the backbone of the piece, rather than the soulless CGI that operated in its place.


3. Speaking of the script, for all that the film's director, Rupert Saunders, has been going on about his film being a "feminist retelling" it... decidedly wasn't. Some advice? If you want your film to have that bent, at least give a female a chance for a co-writer credit on the script. As written and directed by two males, however, the film wanted to be pro-woman, but wasn't, not really. If you want to subvert fairy tale conventions successfully, chances are you shouldn't have the males (namely Chris Hemsworth's Huntsman and Sam Claflin's Prince) do all the rescuing of Snow White and the fighting, even to the point where the only "rescuing" Snow White does of the Huntsman is to beguile a troll with her feminine wiles (I swear to god, it was like the troll was hypnotized by her vagina!) which causes the troll to amble away, all while the Huntsman is unconscious.


4. On the subject of god, wow, this film was really heavily into Narnia-levels of Christian mythology, which I was not expecting and did not enjoy at all. Going back to Snow White and her vagina, the whole film sold her worth as "purity" and "innocence" (feminist retelling my butt) and even worse, the film had it's very own version of Narnia's Aslan with a white stag (heavy-handed symbolism, again) which upon letting Snow White pet him, apparently meant that she was The One™, Jesus-style. All this was really poorly, clumsily done, and really turned me off a large section of the film.


5. I'm one of the few people, it seems, who doesn't have a deeply negative reaction to Kristen Stewart; outside of the Twilight franchise, in fact, I would go so far as to say I like her. However, while not a terrible actress, her casting in this really ruined the character of Snow White for me, simply because she was so bland and unremarkable. People always talked about her constant lip biting as a characteristic of her Bella Swan (Swann?) character, but I think she really thinks her mouth does her acting for her, as she only closed it for about five minutes of the film, something I found incredibly distracting. Was the mouth breathing supposed to communicate purity and innocence somehow? I dunno.


6. So obviously it's pretty well established that I love me some Chris Hemsworth, and of course I adored him in this, but I wish a) that he'd been given more to do and b) that he and Stewart had had any sort of chemistry AT ALL, because there was none. The script (again, clumsily) hit all the stereotypical marks of a developing attachment between the characters who were once on opposite sides (incredibly briefly, it must be said, which was also weirdly paced) and Hemsworth did his best with what he was given, but UGH, there was no spark. And I'm gonna say it was primarily KStew's fault 'cause I've seen Thor, and Hemsworth had tons of chemistry with Natalie Portman, the wettest of wet blankets. So.


7. Related: there were exactly two scenes between Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth that I enjoyed: a) when he told her she looked good in "mail" (which was technically wrong since she was wearing plate armour not chainmail but let's not ask too much of this film) and b) I can't even remember right now what the second part I liked was so it can't have been that great. I'll edit it in later if I remember.


8. Hemsworth also had the world's worst soliloquy while having a good weep over Snow White's corpse (yeah, if you didn't see the "subversion" of the Snow White fairytale being that it's the kiss of the Huntsman that awakens her and not that of the traditional Prince coming, well, that's a thing). He went on about his dead wife and how Snow reminded him of her (this knowledge of attachment is never hot, by the way, but rather creepy: see also Sense and Sensibility) and then says, I kid you not, something along the lines of "Well you may not have gotten to be a Queen on Earth, but now you'll get to be a Queen in heaven, sitting on your throne amongst the angels" and I know Hemsworth did what he could with that but I DIED. I hope someday to be able to use that one.


9. Also, why was the Huntsman randomly Scottish? Everyone else was English or attempting to be so, but the Huntsman was Scottish. It was weird. Not that Hemsworth was particularly bad at the accent (though he wasn't particularly good at it, either) but it was strange.


10. Apparently, on coming out of this film, most people (myself included) mostly want another film but primarily about the Huntsman/his backstory. Here's a tip: that's when you know your "feminist retelling" of a fairytale hasn't worked out for you: when the only character fleshed out and interesting enough to warrant interest in further stories is THE MAN. Not that I mind, and I'll totally see that movie when it comes out because HEMSWORTH ♥, but holy balls.


11. Speaking of the ladies in this film, Charlize Theron was really very good. So good, in fact, that like Hemsworth she deserved to be in a much better film: I'll say it, she's a much better actor that Hemsworth is, and so beyond anything Kristen Stewart has shown so far that matching those two in scenes was rather embarrassing. I kind of wanted the Huntsman and the Queen to have angry adversary sex, rather than anything to do with boring old Snow White.


12. Also, it goes without saying, but Theron's costumes were FANTASTIC. There's definitely a reason Colleen Atwood is an industry standard costume designer.


13. The dwarves (played by non-dwarves including Brendan Gleeson, Toby Jones, and Nick Frost) really livened up the otherwise intolerable middle bit.


14. This movie was also incredibly chaste and PG in the sexiness department, too. I mean I'm not asking for 50 Shades of Grey business ('cause that is really terribly written too) but jeez, I could have handled at least one kiss where Snow White wasn't comatose. Although, in fairness, maybe watching Hemsworth and Stewart make out would have been incredibly uncomfortable and technical, in an "and then I put my mouth on her mouth" kind of way. Their chemistry was so bad. :/


15. The Florence & the Machine song featured at the end pretty much summed up for me the tone that the movie wanted to achieve, but unfortunately didn't.


16. However, dirty, drunken, Aragorn-style Thor is always worth the price of admission, only I wish it had been Tuesday cheap admission, to be honest.