Due to a lovely Friday where I didn’t have to work, I was able to catch two movies. I took in the spectacles that were Wrath of the Titans and Mirror, Mirror. I really enjoyed the latter and despised the former with heat of a thousand suns. Therefore, you’re going to get Mirror,Mirror today, whilst I write a suitable ode of hatred to my new Worst Film of 2012.
On to the review!
If you haven’t heard of Snow White, here’s your primer: A very vain woman marries a widower king who has a lovely daughter. Shit goes down and the king falls under a spell/disappears/acts all dumb and shit. His daughter is on her way to becoming an adult and just happens to be the most beautiful woman in the kindgom. The new queen doesn’t like this one bit and tries to have her killed. It doesn’t go down that way, and Snow White ends up the happy queen. Dwarves are usually involved.
There are a mega shit ton of variations to this movie: Snow White: A Tale of Terror, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Snow White, and a future movie that I hope to despise – Snow White and the Huntsman. They’re all the same damn movie with a few changes. Though some are horrors, some are actions, and some are cute, they’re still all about Snow White. Interestingly, this is the first one I’ve seen that is a genuine comedy.
Y’know what? It turns out that the story of Snow White really lends itself to comedy.
It doesn’t hurt that there was an excellent script and very game actors. Julia Roberts is the greedy, vain and wicked queen while Snow White is played by Lily Collins, a relative newcomer with only a few movies under her belt. This time Snow is a shut-in, forced to stay in her room and browbeaten by her step-mother any time she dares to leave it. This all changes when she turns 18 and braves a trip to the local village, encountering a wandering Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer (hehe, sounds like Arm and Hammer)). This dashing young gentleman is found hanging upside-down after being robbed by 7 bandits of short stature. Add in a fantastic Nathan Lane as the Queen’s ever-suffering aid, Brighton, and I have to admit that I was charmed by this film a lot more than I expected to be.
From there, everything gets complicated and stays amusing.
Without getting carried away and ruining the twists, let me just say thank you, Mirror, Mirror for handling dwarves in a fun, entertaining way without being a douche or an asshole about it. You can genuinely imagine each and every one as an individual. None of them are played up for pure laughs; they’re all genuinely interesting and awesome in their own right, especially Chuckles (Ronald Lee Clark), who is really fun every time he’s on screen. Only A Tale of Terror’s version did a better job at fleshing out any one ‘dwarf,’ and they did that by making 6 of the 7 dwarves…well, not dwarves at all. Jerkfaces.
The best part about Mirror, Mirror is that, despite its PG rating, it finds that perfect balance of entertaining children and adults alike without resorting to lowest-common-denominator entertainment. The kids will enjoy the colors and fight scenes, the goofy stuff and the silly stuff, and none of it is toilet humor (well, okay, one scene involves bird diarrhea, but it’s actually hilarious). The adults will love the silly and goofy stuff too, but there’s also some great wordplay and a few double-entendres mixed in.
Oh yeah, and the story, despite being told thousands of times before, works out great. It keeps the plot light and sharp, an appropriate ending, and there’s also a scene where a ship in someone’s hair fires a canon at someone else’s hairship.
Don’t be afraid to enjoy Mirror, Mirror in the theater. It’s fun and fast-paced enough that none of the kids were any trouble at all and everyone seemed to leave happy. You may see this and argue that it’s not the best Snow White version out there, but you’ll definitely rank it highly.
I would, however, like to make a note of one of the previews I saw. It was a shitty 1-minute teaser trailer that basically let the world know that Stephanie Meyer’s The Host is going to be a movie. Here’s where I’m happy and sad. Since I’ve never read a single book she wrote, I have to go off the comments of others. From all those comments, I’ve gathered that The Host is a nearly complete rip-off of Meyer’s other story, Twilight, only this time with aliens. So boo to Miss Meyers for dipping back into the same damn well without even trying, and boo to the studios for continuing to pump out movies that will inspire a rabid fan base without actually offering anything new or different.
However, yay to the fact that I don’t have a single friend who has read that particular book. (Note: If you are my friend and have read the book, don’t tell me so that I can keep living the lie.)
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