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| 'plucks elements from pretty much every fantasy offering going - from Lord Of The Rings, to Pan's Labyrinth, to Narnia - but it does it all with at least a pinch of its own identity and high levels of visually gripping panache' |
The fact that Snow White And The Huntsman now looks likely to be a film remembered primarily for the personal interactions of certain cast and crew members is a great shame, mainly because there is some excellent work here, much more of it in fact than has been credited elsewhere.
The film, for a start, looks and sounds fantastic, with glorious high-budget cinematography by Greig Fraser and a tremendous and varied score from James Newton Howard. Rupert Sanders' film plucks elements from pretty much every fantasy offering going - from Lord Of The Rings, to Pan's Labyrinth, to Narnia - but it does it all with at least a pinch of its own identity and high levels of visually gripping panache.
For the most part too, Sanders' does a good job at keeping us gripped by a traditional story, given elements of new life by writers Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock and Hossein Amini. The first third in particular is pleasant story-telling, Snow White's (Kristen Stewart) age old predicament given new threat by Brother/Sister evil-doers Ravenna (Charlize Theron) and Finn (Sam Spruell).
It's a great shame that, somewhere around the middle segment, the whole thing threatens to grind to a stunningly inept halt. Snow White stops first with The Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth), then at a riverside community, then with the traditional band of dwarfs. At least one of the latter two story elements needed to be removed (arguably, this would be a better piece without the dwarfs), the film becoming pretty repetitive, pretty quickly, the pace slowing to quicksand. At one-hundred and twenty-seven minutes (five minutes longer if you go for the extended cut) it's already at the top for blockbuster stuff. Twenty minutes of cuts (again, you could achieve this by eliminating the dwarfs) and this could have been really impressive.
As it is, the film is still perfectly fine but as it becomes a grind the problems become more noticeable. Stewart is at least serviceable for the most part but she's not suited to rabble-rousing speeches, nor is Hemsworth particularly, especially in non-Thor mode, and once we come to rely on that sort of mountain moving exposition we're in far too deep, for far too long.
Snow White And The Huntsman is available on UK Blu-ray and DVD from Monday 1st October.
Visually it's quite impressive but there's a lack of originality I found from it from something that's been tagged as a re-imagining. A mish-mash of LoTR, british folk tales and Hayzao Miyazaki that I couldn't help but find stilted and deathly dull at times.
ReplyDeleteWhich is odd because it has some interesting ideas but most of them appear to be visual and not thematic/character which feel pretty thin.
Not sure about Hemsworth's "Scottish Ach-cent" or Stewart's Snow White taking up arms with zero training with a sword. I still don't have a clue how Sam Claflin gets roles which feel so insignificant a la Pirates 4.
I didn't even realise it was he from Pirates 4 but yes, you're right! Completely un-needed, pushed well into the back-ground.
DeleteI thought that too about Hemsworth, but by the time the second act was starting I had forgotten all about it really. But yes, no idea why they had him talk as such.
As I say, I think the stories it weaves together are all very non-original, but it does have an individual look and the story-telling in the first part especially was enough to keep me with it.