Snow White and the Huntsman

I like fairy tales, and I like retellings of fairy tales that flesh them out or reimagine them. You'd think that would have led me to see Snow White and the Huntsman in the theater, but something about it just struck me as Not My Kind of Thing. And I was right, but it was the perfect thing to watch on HBO when I was sick. You really need to be feverish and on cold medicine to properly appreciate it, probably because it seemed like the entire cast was doped up on Nyquil. They all just kind of mumbled their lines like they were barely conscious, and then every so often Charlize Theron would jolt herself out of her stupor and scream something and make me jump. Being on Nyquil yourself makes you more sympathetic to the characters. You want to hand them a tissue and some juice instead of just rolling your eyes at them.

Snow White is a pretty problematic fairy tale to try to translate because the heroine is essentially a Mary Sue -- she's the most beautiful girl around, so beautiful that everyone either loves her instantly or is insanely jealous. The core of the plot is that someone is so jealous of her beauty that she wants to kill her, which is a rather lame motivation for a villain. Some of the retellings attempt to provide another motivation, which can backfire if it's even lamer than "because she's prettier" (see Once Upon a Time). I haven't seen Mirror, Mirror, but my impression is that it was played for laughs there, where we were supposed to think it was a ridiculous motivation. The Disney animated version played it straight. This one really goes for the gusto. Not only is Snow White the fairest of them all, she's so fair and pure and good and sparkly and wonderful that her very existence threatens the queen's powers. You see, the queen has made a career out of marrying kings, killing them, taking over the kingdom and then she seems to get some of the power from killing the kings and other power from taking milk baths and more power from sucking the youth and beauty from all the young, beautiful women in the kingdom (they weren't really precise with the explanations here, or else I missed something in all the soporific mumbling). I guess she moves on when she's depleted the place. Anyway, her magic mirror tells her that her power will be weak while Princess Sparkly Perfect still lives, but if she eats her heart, she'll be immortal. To make sure we know how magically special Snow White is, she literally <i>walks on water</i> to meet the Aslan-like magic white hart that rules the forest, and the Aslan-like creature <i>bows</i> to her as an onlooker breathes, "She is life itself!" So, yeah, go big or go home -- if she's going to be the fairest of them all, why not go over the top?

The movie follows most of the beats of the fairy tale otherwise, except the huntsman sent to get her doesn't send back a deer heart and instead stays with her for a kind of buddy road trip thing, she only stays with the dwarfs for about a night instead of living with them in hiding, she rallies the people into an assault on the castle after being awakened from the magical coma, and nobody falls in love with a corpse in a glass coffin (which is a step up from the story).

I hadn't seen the Twilight movies, so I didn't have a lot of preconceived notions about the Twilight chick, but she seemed to mostly go through the movie with a perpetual "Huh?" look on her face. In fairness, I probably had a similar look while watching the movie, but mine was more "You have got to be kidding me" than "I don't get it." The poor girl just looked confused the whole time. I'm also worried that she needs to be evaluated for breathing difficulties. She spends a lot of time with her mouth hanging open and her chest heaving like she's struggling for air. Maybe that was why she needed all the Nyquil.

I remember when this movie came out that most of the enthusiasm was for the Huntsman character, and apparently he's going to be the focus of a follow-up film, but I have to say that I wasn't impressed at all. He was such a standard issue Something Bad Once Happened to Me, So Now I'm a Drunk Who Doesn't Care About Anything Until The Right Woman Cures Me With Her Magical Sparkliness antihero stereotype. He actually had two Han Solo "I'm leaving because I'm selfish, but I'll come back at the right time" moments. I think he was method acting with the drunkenness and combining it with the Nyquil because he was the worst for sounding like he was barely awake. Not that I blame him, given the dialogue he had to spout. Like, "What does a girl like you know about pain?" Dude, the wicked queen hired you to track her down. Do you really have to ask the question?

The guy I found intriguing and who I'd like to see focused on in a future movie was the former childhood best friend. Yeah, I've got a weakness for the childhood best friend type, but this one had just as much reason for pain and guilt but didn't feel the need to go on and on about his angsty manpain. Instead, he apparently has been working on some serious skills, and he got the absolute best moment in the movie (one I wish I could steal without being obvious about it so it could go in a more worthy story). He's learned that Snow White is alive (he's believed her dead all this time and blames himself), has escaped and that the queen is hunting her, so he infiltrates the queen's creepily quasi-incestuous brother's (someone's been reading George RR Martin) hunting party by standing in the road in front of them to block their progress and asking if they need a bowman. The queen's brother says they already have one. THWANNNNNG. Thud. "I ask again, do you need a bowman?" That's my kind of badass. Plus, he looks like he smells a lot better than the Huntsman (come to think of it, that may explain her other facial expression, which seems like "What is that smell?" and it may explain the panting and mouth breathing).

The other best thing about the movie was the dwarfs, which were a surprising who's who of British actors. I figure they must have found the bar where they all hang out, dosed their drinks, tossed them into a van when they passed out, then held them prisoner long enough to do their scenes. That's the only explanation that makes sense. Too bad they were barely in the movie.

Actually, there was some potential to this story, although the dialogue was terrible. The main problem was that they didn't bother to flesh out the characters into anything resembling people. Snow White is the Perfect Sparkly Princess with no touch of humanity or depth to her. She mostly exists as a quest object, no matter how much they try to make her a kick-ass woman warrior (note: it takes time to learn to use a sword or even be able to hold it without pain -- something that didn't seem to happen when she was locked in a cell for years). There was nothing to the Huntsman other than his standard-issue angst/reluctant heroism. There were hints of something kind of intriguing about the best friend -- how did he become such an expert archer, what was his relationship with his risk-averse father, what was his role in the rebel underground? -- but he just seems to exist because apparently a movie like this needs a triangle. I wonder if I could write his story of what's going on the whole time Snow White's imprisoned and file off the serial numbers.

But I will say, it gave me a laugh or two and inspired me to start thinking about how I'd deal with the issues inherent in the Snow White tale.