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Snow White and the Huntsman (Movie Review)

In the epic action-adventure Snow White and the Huntsman, Kristen Stewart (Twilight) plays the only person in the land fairer than the evil queen (Oscar winner Charlize Theron) out to destroy her.  But what the wicked ruler never imagined is that the young woman threatening her reign has been training in the art of war with a huntsman (Chris Hemsworth, Thor) dispatched to kill her.  Sam Claflin (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) joins the cast as the prince long enchanted by Snow White’s beauty and power.  The breathtaking new vision of the legendary tale is from Joe Roth, the producer of Alice in Wonderland, producer Sam Mercer (The Sixth Sense) and acclaimed commercial director and state-of-the-art visualist Rupert Sanders.  The second Snow White movie of the year releases on Friday June 1st.  The first, Mirror Mirror, was the lighter side of the story, with Snow White and The Huntsman certainly representing the dark side.

Film  

Charlize Theron stars as the evil queen, desperate to keep her beauty and her magical powers.  Kristen Stewart is the young and beautiful Snow White.  I’m happy to report that the key elements of the Snow White story are there – the magic mirror, the poison apple, and of course the dwarves.  The magic mirror is not a traditional mirror, but it does its job answering when the queen asks “mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all.”  For years, the mirror tells the queen that she is the fairest until Snow White comes of age.   In more ways than one, Snow White is an immense threat to the queen.  She sends her dutiful brother to the tower Snow White has been locked in, to take her life.

Snow White escapes the grasp of the Queen’s brother and runs into the dark forest.  The queen must find someone brave enough to track Snow White into the dark forest, where most men won’t venture.  Chris Hemsworth plays the dirty, but handsome Huntsman.  The Queen promises to use her powers to bring his wife back in exchange for retrieving Snow White.

There are a lot of things that I liked about Snow White and the Huntsman.  First of all, I applaud seeing the dark side of the story.  This is definitely an adult movie.  It’s visually very interesting and has a lot of unique effects.  Charlize Theron does an excellent job playing the Queen.  She plays the character with just the right about of evil and vulnerability.  Kristen Stewart is not one of my favorite actresses but she makes a decent Snow White.  I absolutely loved Chris Hemsworth and his Irish accent as the Huntsman.

The things I didn’t like are minor details.  The girl who played the young Snow White was very cute, but had brown hair.  If you’re going to play Snow White at any age I feel like you are required to have jet black hair.  Maybe there are rules against dying the hair of young actors, but if that is the case I would have suggested they keep looking for an actress with black hair.  While I loved Chris Hemsworth’s accent, I couldn’t figure out Kristen Stewart’s.  It sounded as though she was attempting a British accent but couldn’t quite pull it off.    The queen’s brother was a little beyond an acceptable level of creepy and I could have done without him in the story at all.

I left out a lot of the details, so as not to spoil it for my readers.  Snow White and the Huntsman has a lot going on, and it’s almost as though it is written specifically to set up a sequel.  Some of the plot points aren’t the way I would have gone with the script.  I expected to dislike Snow White and the Huntsman and was pleasantly surprised with the film as a whole.  Most of what sold it for me was Charlize Theron’s spot on portrayal of the Evil Queen.  As far as I’m concerned she carried this film and is responsible for any success it has.  Kristen Stewart does a good job in not ruining the film, which is what I had anticipated.

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