Once upon a time, a remake of a beloved fairytale fell flat, despite all its attempts to breathe new life into a classic story.
And so the story goes with “Mirror Mirror,” a sarcastic retelling of the Snow White tale directed by Tarsem Singh (“Immortals”).
Though its start seems familiar enough, with the beautiful and innocent princess Snow White (Lily Collins, “The Blind Side”); her loving and valiant father, the King (Sean Bean, “Lord of the Rings”); and, of course, the devilishly wicked stepmother as Queen (Julia Roberts, “Larry Crowne”), this is not the Snow White of childhood bedtime stories.
Following the disappearance and presumed death of the King, the wretched Queen ascends to the throne only to spend all of the kingdom’s money, leaving the populace wallowing in poverty and misery.
Having sunk the kingdom in a medieval depression and desperate to hold on to the title of the fairest of them all, the Queen decides to have a marriage of financial convenience. She soon finds the perfect suitor in the charmingly handsome and adorably clueless Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer, “The Social Network”). However, she is a bit too late as an early chance encounter with sheltered and charming Snow White has left him smitten.
As the familiar tale goes, the Queen orders her faithful right hand man Brighton (Nathan Lane, “The Producers”) to kill Snow White. He takes pity on the adorable and alluring Snow White and advises her to flee to the outskirts of the kingdom, where the seven dwarves adopt her.
Yet even these cornerstones of the story take on different meaning and purpose in trying to emphasize the supposedly edgy and unique nature of the film. Gone are the simplistic caricatures of dwarves named after specific personality traits. These dwarves have names like Napoleon, Grimm and Butcher and operate as a group of rough and tumble bandits and steady source of comic relief.
No longer is the mirror on the wall just a talking mirror, but rather a portal to a creepy isolated hut in the middle of nowhere where the Queen is advised by a doppelganger oracle.
The starkest alteration is Snow White. She is no longer the damsel in distress but the movie’s true heroine.
Writers Melissa Wallack (who makes her writing debut with this film) and Jason Keller (“Machine Gun Preacher”) introduce a certain crude and sarcastic strain of self-aware humor that periodically elevates the flat and bland script to make it campy and mildly entertaining.
Then there are costume designer Eiko Ishioka’s (“Immortals”) imaginative and whimsical designs, which double as creative reinforcers of the characters’ personas. The all-powerful Queen is decked out in gold expansively majestic ball gowns, and the young Snow White glides about in shimmery flowing pastels.
Similarly, Singh tries to encapsulate the magic of the fairytale on the silver screen with ambitious CGI-driven scenery that mesmerizes but does not salvage the film as a whole.
As the film fails at presenting a particularly gripping story or producing an exciting visual spectacle, it is now on the performances to offer some glimmer of hope or redeeming value.
Unfortunately there is little to be found there, as the actors offered little in the form of multidimensional characters. The stars deliver little in mostly stereotypical roles, except for Julia Roberts who does truly radiate evil in her take of the wicked and maniacal Queen — but that can only go so far.
There is no happy ending for the viewer, but rather a pleasant boredom.
