‘Snow White’ (2025) Review – Where Has The Magic Gone?

There’s simply no other way to put it: Disney’s live-action remakes, at least, for the most part, don’t feel like Disney as they’ve always been known. The magic is gone, replaced by an overreliance on malignant special effects, stilted performances and a gross misunderstanding of the source material. Perhaps there exists an argument to be made about the state of the company behind it all – is the problem deeper than the individual films? Is Disney, as it is now, the product of an actual, irreversible, terribly unfortunate evolution?

Maybe, maybe not. But either way, Snow White makes no new case for the aforementioned remake scene. If anything, it’s the worst of the bunch, exemplifying all the worst habits of these modern resurrections and abandoning what little some of them do well. At the least, this is a story that is relatively well adapted here. What it changes falls flat, but such trivialities are useless given a bigger picture that is faithful to the 1937 classic where it matters. Where Snow White falls apart is, well, just about everywhere else.

Although little new can be said about the decision to turn the seven dwarves into digital monstrosities, it’s difficult not to mention it when the choice essentially neuters the film for any real emotional impact regarding those characters. They look and feel terribly out of place, smoothed over and cartoonish in comparison to the plain realism exhibited by the actors at hand.

Regarding those actors, they’re about what you’d expect. Gal Gadot is the only negative standout in the film as she continues to tear down a confusing career path, but even so, nobody here stands in the opposite camp of explicit positivity. Every performance is a caricature of the original character at hand, and, unfortunately, this effect bleeds into the film’s musical numbers, too. Despite objectively impressive vocal performances (for the most part) across the board, the visual manner in which these tunes are delivered is so milquetoast as to almost be incomprehensible. It’s like watching a rehearsal – sets look incomplete, lighting is one-dimensional, and costumes appear unfettered and unusually clean. The whole thing just feels like a test run, especially during the songs.

If there’s anything positive to be said about the way the movie looks, it’s that it bears the price tag proudly. Every bit of the film’s multi-hundred-million-dollar budget is clearly splayed out in sweeping landscapes and flocks of actors and extras. If that alone can get your butt in a seat, there may be hope yet for a thumbs-up experience here. It’s a blockbuster, undoubtedly, committed to the scale and series of expected beats that come attached to that ideal.

But the film suffers a serious detachment issue in regards to the emotional beats it attempts to drum. While Zegler and the rest of the cast do their best to deliver the subpar dialogue, there exists an extreme disconnect between the movie and the audience here. Nothing beloved about the original film made it into this remake, so… why see this one?

The answer is laughably unclear. Whether you’re a diehard Disney fan or someone looking for a good time at the movies this weekend, Snow White is an abysmal miss either way. There just isn’t anything of substance or singularity here to justify a ten-dollar ticket, let alone the millions and millions of dollars that went into making it. Maybe this film’s (projected) failure will finally serve as the system shock that Disney needs to switch up their formula, but if the slate this summer is any indication, things are only going to get worse.

Snow White is currently playing exclusively in theaters courtesy of Disney.