Snow White is finally out in theaters after what feels like months of drama, hot takes, and online social media contortions that twisted people into knots. Everyone had an opinion on Rachel Zegler, on Disney, on what this movie was going to be … and what it wasn’t. The buildup became so bloated with backlash and assumptions that it’s still hard to separate the film from the frenzy, but at least we have a movie to actually review and talk about. So, I’m going to do my best to review the actual movie that was released, not the one people were speculating about online.

Just a heads-up: there is a lot to talk about with this film, both good and bad, and to do that there will be spoilers in this review, because I want to talk about the story honestly and clearly. This is one of those films that needs to be dissected to really understand what it’s doing to see where it succeeds and where it stumbles. You may not agree with everything I say, or maybe you do, but I hope you’ll hear me out.

You can read the review below or watch the video review on YouTube:

Story Summary

Snow White is Disney’s latest live-action remake, and it’s a remake of the most important film in Disney’s library since the animated classic that essentially launched Walt Disney Studios and revolutionized cinema. This version is directed by Marc Webb, written by Erin Cressida Wilson, and stars Rachel Zegler as Snow White, Andrew Burnap as Jonathan, and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen. Inspired by fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, Snow White tells the story of a young princess’s struggle against her evil stepmother whose jealousy and desire for power not only puts her life at risk but the lives of her people as well.

The film opens with a traditional Disney-style song titled “Where the Good Things Grow,” which sets the tone for the kingdom and the royal family’s close connection with their people. It introduces us to young Snow White, her parents, who are the queen and the king if the realm. The royal family has a tradition of sharing apple pies with their people as a sign of love and unity, and there’s a strong sense of community between the royals and the people, right from the beginning.

Then the queen dies, and the king remarries a mysterious, strikingly beautiful woman from a far-off land. The kingdom and Snow White’s life is never the same after that as her father rides off to battle and never returns, and the new queen, wary of the pretty little princess cuts her hair short in an ugly bob and dresses her in scullery rags and hides Snow White away from her people, setting the stage for the Evil Queen to eventually try to destroy the princess and secure her own power.

Throughout most of the film, the live action adaptation does hold fairly close to the animated classic, with some significant story elements that depart from the original while still holding true to the ideals of the original – which I didn’t expect due to Rachel Zegler’s early comments to the press.

First Impressions and Structure

For anyone familiar with the original or who really understands how stories are written and structured, one of the first things you’ll notice is a strange patchwork feeling in the middle of the film. I don’t think everyone will automatically notice this or if they do, they may not be able to put a finger on the oddness that they experience with the story. It’s like you can still see the cutout silhouette of an earlier version of the story that has been stripped away and patched.

Specifically, Jonathan who is the leaders of a group of bandits who live in the woods is caught in the palace stealing food and he challenges Snow White to join them in fighting the Evil Queen, and it feels like there are shadows of a former story in which Snow White escaped the castle and immediately joined up with the bandits, who essentially were meant to replace the dwarfs. Prior to the release, someone at Disney must have realized that Snow White without the Seven Dwarfs just doesn’t work. And they’re right. So, they inserted CGI dwarfs, and honestly, it shows because the dwarfs feel like an afterthought.

The Problem with the Dwarfs

The seven dwarfs are hyper realistic CGI characters who feel jarring in a live-action film. It’s not the same as CGI animals—which, fine, the animated forest creatures work. However, making human characters who are supposed to be integral, emotional parts of the story into fake non-human beings creates a disconnect between the viewer, the actors, and the story itself. Plus, it doesn’t help that their heads are disproportionately large for their bodies, accentuating their photo-realistic eyes within slightly unrealistic faces, which makes these characters feel uncanny. Dopey stands out for a different reason. Every time I saw him, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Mad Magazine kid. I just couldn’t unsee the resemblance.

And yet, the kids in my theater clearly didn’t care. The little girl sitting next to me was absolutely delighted by the dwarfs, giggling as they danced around the cottage with Snow White. In that moment, I realized I realized that maybe it’s us adults who are hung up on the CGI. Maybe the kids don’t have all of our cinematic baggage to react to when watching the film.

That said, I think that they didn’t execute this choice very well. If you’re doing a live-action adaptation, you need actual human beings in these roles. Talented little people actors exist, and their presence would have grounded the story in a more believable world.

Echoes of the Original Grimm’s Fairy Tale

However, I really appreciated how the film enhanced the dwarves’ intrinsic connection to the natural world that allowed them to make special minerals glow in the mines, highlighting their fairytale-esque connection to the earth. It feels like a thoughtful nod to the original Grimm fairy tales, especially Snow White and Rose Red, where the dwarfs weren’t just comic relief or helpers. They were elemental beings, guardians of nature and hidden wealth, deeply connected to the land itself. In this version, their glowing hands, which are connected to their mining magic is not just a CGI gimmick. Instead, it actively restores some of that deeper folkloric essence to the film.

The same goes for the rose metaphor used by the Evil Queen. She crushes a beautiful rose in her hand and calls it weak, something that fades and turns to ash, in comparison to the strength of a diamond. However, in the Grimm tales, the rose isn’t a symbol of fragility, and this reveals the Queen’s lack of understanding when it comes to the power of beauty and goodness. The rose is a counterpart to Snow White herself. So, when the Queen uses it as a metaphor for beauty and how she destroys it, that action has ripples throughout the story that are layered, if not a little too overt. It ties Snow White and Rose Red back together in spirit within this film, even if Rose Red isn’t physically in this version of the fairy tale. It’s a quiet but meaningful connection to the original story from the Brothers Grimm. This is an overly simplistic explanation that I am making for the sake of time in this review, but I really wanted to bring this up since I haven’t heard many people making connections to the original stories that inspired Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Artistic Direction and CGI Choices

Visually, there are highs and lows within the film, and Disney is without a doubt a master of animated cinematography. The transformation scene from the beautiful Evil Queen to the ugly Old Crone is gorgeously styled, but it loses its impact due to an over reliance on CGI for Gal Gadot. Her voice remains light and young, and her facial expressions and lip movements don’t quite match the emotions in her voice that could have been captured by using better physical effects. Her transformation also lacks the creepiness associated with the ritualistic magic of the animated original when the Evil Queen was rummaging around her apothecary for things like “mummy dust and a scream of fright” as she recited the spell. That’s gone, and its absence is felt, even if you can’t identify “why” it feels flat in the moment.

Gal Gadot herself (look, she’s not terrible), but she’s miscast. She’s stiff, awkward, and doesn’t bring the presence this role demands as the iconic OG of Evil Queens in the Disney universe. Worse, the way she’s styled with her robes, jewels, headdress, and her crown flatten out her appearance. She looks like a nun, with shiny makeup who is wearing costume jewelry. She’s supposed to be the fairest of them all, but the design choices just don’t work in her favor and are disappointing. Worse, her singing is decent, but she simply can’t match Rachel Zegler’s voice. And in a Disney musical, especially one where the Evil Queen needs to exude power and strength, her voice must be part of that package and Gadot can’t compete.

Rachel Zegler, on the other hand, is spectacular. I never thought I would say that because of how much she has annoyed me lately. Say what you want about the pre-release interviews and her utterly naive and clueless commentary, but she can act. More than that, she can sing, and she understands musical theater in a way that out classes Gal Gadot in every way. The most unfortunate thing about her performance is that Rachel Zegler never fully fades away into her character, not because of her acting but because of her off-screen presence and the months long drama she created. It’s a real case study for future actors to learn how their off-screen actions can impact their on-screen performance in the eyes of the audience.

Characters and Chemistry

When it comes to Jonathan, played by Andrew Burnap, he’s not a prince in this version. Instead, he’s the leader of a group of bandits, and despite what Rachel Zegler led us all to believe about his role, he actually plays an incredibly important part in the story. In fact, the character of Jonathan is so much more important and integral to this version of Snow White than the Prince was to the original version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He challenges Snow White who had basically given up and resigned herself to the life of a scullery maid.

This story and her transformation happened because of him. He wakes her up, figuratively, before he ever kisses her. He’s the reason she starts questioning her place and what happened to her father. It’s because of him that she begins to care about her people again and rises to confront the Evil Queen. Plus, there’s real chemistry between them, and their relationship feels earned since there is a constant exchange of values and understanding between them. They literally save each other even as they start to realize that there is something more than friendship between them.

That’s what makes “true love’s kiss” work so well. When Jonathan finds her lifeless body laid out beneath a canopy of flowers, he doesn’t kiss her because he thinks it will save her. He kisses her because he never got a chance to tell her that he loved her while she was alive. In that kiss, he gave a bit of himself to her. That sincere, unselfish love, that is what breaks even the strongest curses in fairy tales, and this story solves that age old problem of the original animated classic of the random prince who fell in love with Snow White’s physical beauty. Instead, Jonathan falls in love with the woman, and that is hella romantic.

It also makes Zegler’s early press comments about not needing a prince totally wrong. Whether she misunderstood the character, or whether Disney rewrote the film afterward to fix the problem, I can’t say. The final version of the film is romantic , featuring a reciprocal relationship between Snow White and Jonathan. He really is the hero of this story in many unexpected ways.

Plot Holes and Pacing

This leads into the biggest flaw of the film. The Evil Queen knows Jonathan loves Snow White, and she even says it to him, but she still chooses a curse that can be broken by true love’s kiss. How does that make sense? There’s no logical reason for her to use that spell if she knows someone loves Snow White and she is stupid enough to leave him alive in the dungeon. She’s ordering deaths right and left. So, why leave him alive to break the curse?

This could have been fixed so easily by having the Evil Queen poison Snow White before realizing Jonathan loves her. This would create more realistic tension and raise our hopes that he will escape and undo the spell before the Queen realizes her error. But no. The film skips right over this, and it’s a frustrating missed opportunity.

The other major issue is the bandits. They feel awkward in the story even though we understand they are symbolic of the people of the kingdom. They serve a valid story purpose, but the actors and characters just don’t mesh. Jonathan fits in, but they don’t. I think part of the problem is that they all played their parts like they were caricatures of the dwarves. I think on paper, Disney thought the bandits could stand in for the dwarfs while also representing the people of the kingdom, but they just weren’t strong enough or well defined enough to serve two purposes within the story that are so very different. My guess is that when the film was reviewed, Disney realized that the bandits just didn’t work and that was why they added the CGI dwarves into the film. If this is what happened, I actually think they did an amazing job of repairing the story despite the flaws and problems that it created.

Thematic Direction and Modern Touches

There are some themes and modern touches that work really well in the film. The most important of these is the apple, which becomes a motif throughout the movie. From the opening in which the royal family shares apple pies with the people to the Evil Queen ordering the Huntsman to kill Snow White while apple picking in the forest and her use of the poisoned apple—it becomes symbolic of family, of love, and of Snow White’s ties to her people. This is why, when the Evil Queen offers it to her as “sustenance for the road,” it’s not just a snack. It’s a connection from someone she sees as one of her people who is actively giving her a connection back to who she used to be as a princess, and that narrative thread works really well. In fact, it works better than it did in the original animated film.

After all the drama from Rachel Zegler’s comments, I had assumed that Snow White would lead a violent fight against the Evil Queen, but that’s not at all what happens. She never raises a weapon. She doesn’t fight. And, she’s not a she-ro in this film. In fact, Snow White is very feminine and girly in this movie, and she even refuses to kill the Evil Queen. Instead, she breaks the Queen’s power with kindness and by helping others to remember who they are and to stand with the Princess and Jonathan. The Queen’s downfall comes with the realization that her power is tied to her beauty and her beauty is only skin deep, while Snow White’s beauty is physical as well as emotional. That’s a powerful truth that the Evil Queen can’t counter.

And the theme of beauty and power is threaded throughout the film. The Queen’s magic is literally tied to her physical appearance. It’s her beauty that seduced the King, it’s her beauty that ensorcelled the men around her to do her bidding, it’s her physical beauty that the mirror validates, and it’s her beauty that sustains her magic. Her obsession with surface-level strength is what leads to her undoing. Snow White’s beauty isn’t just in her face. Her power is in her hope, her compassion, and her connection to others. In the end, when the Queen realizes she can’t match that inner strength, she shatters her mirror in anger and her own magic destroys her in the blow back of her rage, which is a far more fitting death than how the Evil Queen (as the Old Crone) fell off a cliff while running away from the dwarfs.

The Music – Old and New

Finally, with any Disney musical, the music has got to be strong. Snow White is a blend of songs from the original animated classic as well as some new ones clearly designed to enhance the story and fill in a few of the emotional gaps. One notable omission is “Someday My Prince Will Come,” which was replaced by a different song that focuses more on the importance of knowing yourself and those around you, rather than sitting around waiting for love to find you.

This is a poignant change in Snow White’s character, and I actually watched the original animated classic right after watching the live action film, and I was struck by how much more interesting Snow White is as a person in the live action film. In the cartoon, her defining values as a human are her looks, her cooking skills, and her ability to clean. I absolutely support women in any role they want to play in society and in family, but even the most wonderful housewives who I know have so much more to offer to their husbands and family’s than domestic service.

This is an intentional shift within the story and the music, and they give Snow White more agency while also giving the other characters like Jonathan more agency. He’s not just a man looking for a pretty wife, he’s a man looking for a partner who is also his friend and who is someone who truly sees his value as well. And isn’t that the whole point of a relationship … to be seen and to be loved by the person you see and love?

I also really enjoyed the update to the dwarves “Hi Ho” song, which was a highlight because their singing voices were lovely. Sadly, it didn’t feel like the dwarves themselves were singing because of the CGI limitations, but the song still managed to bring a moment of nostalgia and fun into the film. It’s one of those rare times when the musical update strikes the right balance between honoring the original and adapting to the tone of the remake.

Final Thoughts and Recommendation

So, should you see Snow White? Is it ticket worthy? Well, it depends. If you’re already anti-Disney, anti-remake, or can’t stand CGI or Rachel Zegler, this film won’t change your mind. However, if you can get past some of that or if you’re curious, open to musicals, and willing to view it as a modern fairy tale …. I think you may actually find parts of it enjoyable despite its flaws because the dreaded “messaging” that we kept hearing about in all of the internet hand-wringing is not nearly as present as we were led to believe.

The songs aren’t showstoppers, but Rachel Zegler’s signing is impressive. It’s a romantic film that was not represented well in the comments made by Zegler, and I think that actually makes it a decent date night or friends film if you are looking for something to do that is decent. If you have kids, I think they will enjoy it. They won’t be coming at this film with all of our preconceived notions and expectations. They are just going to see a Disney Princess, the man she falls in love with, and the Evil Queen who has to be defeated; and if the kids in my theater are any indication for how other kids will respond to Snow White, I think this movie will resonate with them.

In fact, the little girl next to me was in tears when Snow White died. She actually crawled into her mom’s lap and sobbed. Then when Jonathan kissed Snow White, the little girl made this gurgling laughing gasp that made my eyes water because of how she responded to the story. So, after the film ended, I had to ask her what part was her favorite, and without flinching she said: “I liked when the evil queen blew up and died.” And I left the theater laughing. So, yes, Snow White was ticket worthy for me.

Maybe it was because there were some good parts of the film; maybe it was the little girl sitting next to me in the theater who showed me that there was some magic in the film that I would have otherwise missed seeing. Really, I’m glad I saw it even if it was flawed.

Post-Release PR and Rachel Zegler

So, I can’t end this without talking about Disney and the Rachel Zegler PR mess. Look, yes, she said those words that created an internet firestorm, and she must take responsibility for them. However, Disney absolutely failed her. She is young, excited, and inexperienced with the press – even though this isn’t her first merry-go-round. Disney sent her out to promote their MOST IMPORTANT film with no media training on what to expect and how to anticipate reporters who are looking for a soundbite that will go viral. That’s on them, and she got baited. Disney said nothing. Gal Gadot said nothing. And Zegler just kept talking and digging herself deeper. It’s a sad case study of the impact of social media and how everything we say in the past is always current and never forgotten, and that sometimes you just need to stop talking.

It’s a hard lesson, and I hope she’s learned from it. But I also hope Disney has, too, because very little of that drama reflected the movie that I actually saw, and it really exposed just how disposable Disney sees its actors and properties … and maybe even its fans.

So, Snow White, are you going to see it? Or did you see it already? Was it what you expected? Did it surprise you? Let me know in the comments – even if you absolutely disagree with me, and that’s okay too because I know this film will not be something everyone will enjoy.

If you’d like to watch the original animated classic film Snow White, here is my Amazon Associate link:

Original Animated Snow White on Prime Video: https://amzn.to/4kQTl92