Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Snow White and the Huntsman

(2012)

Early on in this picture Charlize Theron as the Evil Queen Ravenna actually does face the Magic Mirror and asks it:

Mirror, Mirror on the wall,
Who is fairest of them all?

Well, the mirror really should have answered something like this: “You’re kidding, right? Fishing for compliments? Charlize, as you well know, in a beauty contest with you and Kristen Stewart in it, she’s not even Miss Congeniality.” Unless she goes all Dorian Gray on us, you know, ages ninety years in ten seconds. (Which she does, you know she does.) So that’s one credibility problem right there, the new “fairest of them all” ain’t really the fairest.

The other problem I had was that of the eight dwarfs, none of … wait a minute. Eight? Let’s see, one, two, three … yep, there’s eight of them. Oh, right, I get it, one of them is going to die and that leaves a not-so-magnificent seven. Okay, back to my gripe. Of the dwarfs, not a single one of them is a real dwarf. It’s all done with camera tricks. This is cruel, with all the real dwarfs who can act, not the least of whom … well, yeah, the least of whom, when you think about it, is Peter Dinklage. Bob Hoskins is not tall, but who the hell needs him for this small—ahem—part with all the out-of-work small people out there? Of them all, only Toby Jones even looks like a dwarf, and he’s actually five-five.

Having said all that, I will say this was better than I expected. I ate my way pleasurably enough through a tub of popcorn, and what more can you ask of a picture like this? It’s very dark, and fairly violent here and there, but not too bad. In the Enchanted Forest (I forget what it’s actually called) there are some nice Avatar-like plants and creatures, though I thought the elves were pretty much right off the shelf. Kristin Stewart gives her usual emotion-free performance. After the Twilight foolishness is all in the can, and what with the sex scandal, this chick might have trouble finding work in a year or two. Or not. I admit I can no longer fathom the enthusiasms of the younger generation (see Bieber, Justin). Maybe she’s the next Hepburn. Or not.