This is the first entry in the coverage of 2012’s Snow White Movies.
We start with a movie called „Robin Hood„. It’s a story of a young aristocrat, who is betrayed by the royal ruler od the country, and escapes into the forest to live a life amongst thieves and other outcasts, to steal from the richt and give it to the poor, the village people.
Not THESE village people
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The evil ruler and the fresh vigilante fight over the heart of a love interest, then there is a wedding, which gets of course crashed, and a battle begins. Finally, ruler and vigilante/ righteous heir to the crown fight for life and death, which the godd hearted protagonist wins of course. In the end, the lost king returns, giving his blessing to the marriage of the loving couple.
If you just asked yourself why I summarised the story of Robin Hood, it’s due to the fact that it is also the story of „Mirror Mirror.“ You read correctly. This Snow White adaptation changes many details of the original story, 18 year old Snow White (Lily Collins) becomes a vigilante after the first half of the movie, and steals the queen’s (Julia Roberts) treasures to give it to the people who had been robbed/ mugged themselves. But there’s also the charming Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer), Snow White’s and the queen’s love interest. He is in love with snow White himself, until he finds out that she is the bandit’s leader, and falls under the queen’s (puppy) love spell.
But Snow White crashes their wedding, and the dwarfs help her getting her first kiss with the Prince. Wait a second, wasn’t it the other way round? And shouldn’t there be an apple in this?
Like this one? Oh yeah, there IS an apple in this, that one is not of much use (unless you count destroying the witch/ queen once and for all). Snow White’s dad, the King (Sean Bean) later returns at the end, after having lived as the forest beast for 12 years.
Well, what can be said about this movie? On the one hand it tries to be a different approach to the fairy tale (which it somewhat fullfills), and tries to be darker, more mature, on the other hand it still feels like a child movie (not that I dislike child movies), that still wants to stay close to the original . While this movie is probably the closest adaptation to Snow White this year, this still feels a little forced.
„Die wirklich wahre Geschichte von Schneewittchen“ the German tagline promisses. The story is also narrated by the evil queen, so you would think they would have changed the story and characters, so that Snow White is kinda bitchy and snobby, and the queen is not that bad at all. That would be so much more interesting and fresh! It’s a pity they didn’t go that way.
There’re a lot of references and hommages to other Snow White versions, especially the Disney one: Collins‘ Snow White does the same hand gesture her animated counterpart does, and she is also introduced by talking to and feeding birds.
and Collins does also sing ( holy shit I just realised that she is Phil Collins‘ daughter!) :
Oh, and there are stormtroopers in this movie! Yes, real stormtroopers. And, I’ve got to admit it, they are part of one of the funniest scenes in this movie, which takes place quite at the beginning.
I also found the acting was quite amusing: Julia Robert definitely had fun playing the role, and although she is not as good as in other and previous movies of her, it’s most of the time fun to watch her. As is Armie Hammer, who definitely is the best actor in this movie. Everytime you see him, you notice the great time he had on the set. He is funny, ambitious and takes his role seriously. But what about the protagonist? I must admit, I was not warm with her at first. But as the movie went on, I became more and more aware of how well she played the role (while she surprisingly got increasingly hotter by the minute). The problem was not her acting, but that the character of Snow White was a little bit blank (just a little). Not her fault.
I also liked ther stereotypical dwarfs, for they were really fun to watch, unlike Nathan Lane, who became wuite annoying with time.
Final verdict: Mirror, Mirror, is an innocent (despite being a rip-off) movie for a young audience. It has some flaws and logic holes, and the costumes are god awful, but you have a good time watching it.
And they lived happily ever after
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