Disney’s headline-grabbing live-action remake of Snow White has debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with an underwhelming rating after mixed-to-negative reactions from critics.
The new movie, out in cinemas on Friday, has received a low score of 48% from 96 reviews – making it officially considered ‘rotten’ on the review aggregator website.
Snow White is Disney latest reimagining – as the studio terms it – in a long line of remakes over the last decade, from The Jungle Book to Aladdin and Cinderella.
This one sees Disney tackle its first-ever feature-length animation from 1937, starring Rachel Zegler in the titular role.
But despite initial promising reactions on social media after a rocky road to release, many official critics’ reviews appear to consider the film closer to a poisoned apple than the fairest of them all.
‘I had high hopes that Snow White would make me happy. Instead, this dopey remake made me sleepy and grumpy,’ quipped Odie Henderson for The Boston Globe, while The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it an ‘exhaustingly awful reboot’ and added in a one-star review: ‘This feels like a very hard day’s work in the IP diamond mine.’
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The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey was equally unimpressed by the ‘visually repellant’ film, penning: ‘With Snow White, they’ve finessed their formula – do the bare minimum to make a film, then simply slap a bunch of cutesy CGI animals all over it and hope no one notices.’
‘There’s nothing magical in Marc Webb’s movie, but it nevertheless feels uncanny; spending $250million (£192m) to make a film in which absolutely nothing works is a kind of dark art in and of itself,’ sniped the Toronto Star.
‘It represents a new low for cultural desecration and for a venerable 102-year-old entertainment company that now looks at its source material with a pinched nose of disgust,’ added The Times’ Kevin Maher, while The Wrap observed: ‘There’s nothing wrong with Disney’s live-action remake of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ that couldn’t be fixed by making it 26 minutes shorter, 88 years ago and in hand-drawn animation.’
However, there are multiple middle-of-the-road reactions and ratings, with The Telegraph awarding it three stars, as critic Robbie Collin dubbed it ‘better than wicked’.
‘Think of it as a slightly self-nobbling version of Enchanted, the wondrous (and original) Disney blockbuster that both sent up and celebrated the Disney princess musical tradition in 2007,’ he suggested.
‘The story is cluttered, the tone is muddled, and the pacing is off. Again, that doesn’t make the film a disaster. In some ways, the identity crisis is what makes it worth seeing,’ wrote Nicholas Barber for the BBC, also calling it ‘undoubtedly the most fascinating’ of Disney’s remakes.
Others had even more positive remarks, with the Daily Express writing in a four-star reaction: ‘Marc Webb’s reimagining is a welcome surprise, full of enchantment and joyous new songs.’
‘A visually stunning, thematically rich adaptation that successfully modernises the classic tale. This is a fairy tale for a new generation – one that reminds us all of the power of courage, kindness, and believing in a better future,’ shared HeyUGuys.
I also praised Snow White in my review for Metro as ‘one of [Disney’s] strongest and most worthwhile ‘reimaginings’ to date’ and described Zegler as ‘an enchanting talent with a voice to match, [who] carefully avoids falling into twee territory as the original Disney princess’.
‘In terms of magic over media frenzy – the only metric that really matters when it comes to a family film after all – Disney’s Snow White is up there alongside Cinderella and The Jungle Book in terms of quality and personality.’
Disney live-action remakes do not historically have the highest ratings on Rotten Tomatoes among critics, although 2016’s treatment of The Jungle Book is on 94%; the Johnny Depp-starring Alice in Wonderland is on 50% while Maleficent has 54% and last year’s hit Mufasa: The Lion King only has 57%.
Disney’s 2019 remake of The Lion King, which is the 11th highest-grossing film of all time with over $1.6billion (£1.2bn) earned at the box office, is also on just 51%.
Meanwhile, films including Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Dumbo are below Snow White in terms of scores, with Robert Zemeckis’ take on Pinocchio, led by Tom Hanks, at the bottom on 27%.
Snow White has been the subject of multiple waves of ‘anti-woke’ backlash ahead of its release, from negative reactions to Zegler’s disparaging opinion of the ‘dated’ original as well as Disney’s decision to rework some of the storyline.
There has also been vocal criticism from actors with dwarfism, including Game Of Thrones star Peter Dinklage, over Disney’s handling of the CGI-rendered dwarfs, as well as backlash to the political opinions of both Zegler and Israeli-born Gal Gadot, who plays the Evil Queen.
Snow White is released in cinemas on Friday, March 21.
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