Sometimes, it’s OK to leave 90-year-old things alone!

“Snow White” is the live-action retelling of the classic 1939 film, continuing Disney’s trend of remaking their animated properties. Telling a similar story as the original, the film follows the titular princess (Rachel Zegler) who must escape an evil queen (Gal Gadot) who wishes her dead; Marc Webb directs.

The live-action Disney remakes have been a mixed bag, ranging from the inspired (“The Jungle Book“), the fun (“Cruella“), and the completely pointless (“The Lion King“). “Snow White” falls into that middle territory, offering some nostalgic moments and toe-tapping musical sequences but ultimately fails to justify its own existence.

Generally speaking, I like Rachel Zegler as an actress. She’s had an actor’s dream start to a career, beginning with a Golden Globe-winning performance in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” remake and then co-leading big-budget fairs like “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and the “Hunger Games” prequel (as well as the horror-comedy “Y2K,” which I enjoyed). That being said, she has yet to seemingly find a film that can be labeled as truly “good” (everything in her filmography falls under “solid!” at best), and “Snow White” won’t yet remedy that. Zegler is able to give off some warmth and charm here, and like her other roles she shows she can hold a musical note. However often she is forced to act alongside things that aren’t actually there (whether that’s CGI creatures, motion capture dwarfs, or Gal Gadot’s acting ability), which can make some of her deliveries or facial expressions awkward. I do think Zegler can be more than just the face of $150 million (or in this case, $270 million) studio IP projects, but if she wants to spend her 20s cashing big checks then I can’t blame her.

I think Gal Gadot gets (a little) too much hate from the internet for her acting; she has shown in the likes of “Wonder Woman” that she’s at the very least capable of giving a decent performance. That being said, she’s pretty terrible and wooden here. Gadot tries to be stoic and menacing as the Evil Queen, but often it comes off as whiny or nonchalant. She also has a song that rivals her COVID-era “Imagine” video and “Emilia Perez” for most cringe and out-of-nowhere musical number of all-time. There were a couple line deliveries that made me laugh out loud or groan, and I think that we need to start having a conversation about who we pay $15 million to lead our franchises.

The film had controversy attached to it from the start, with Zegler being critical of the original film (calling it “weird”) and the seven dwarfs being reimaged as simply supernatural humans (until the internet saw a photo of that and forced Disney to again change course and make them CGI motion-capture). The dwarfs on their own look fine, but when sharing a scene with Zegler they come off a bit of an uncanny valley like “The Polar Express,” and it just makes you wonder why Disney would take seven high-profile jobs away from actors with dwarfism and give them to computers. That being said, the “Heigh-Ho” music number is a lot of fun and “Whistle While You Work” feels ripped right out of the original film, so if this had come out in say 2003, before the internet was the way it is, then I’m sure the depiction of the Dwarfs would be receiving praise.

Much of the film plays like a parody of the fairy tale genre, with shades of “Shrek,” “Wicked,” and classic Disney tropes abound. Sometimes it’s fun, others it makes it feel cheap.

“Snow White” is perfectly fine family entertainment; kids were chuckling at my screening and I got a few smiles from jokes clearly written by Greta Gerwig, who did an early draft of the screenplay. The costumes and set designs are surprisingly lacking for a near-$300 million movie released under the Disney banner, but given all this production had working against it since its announcement I suppose it’s a miracle that it managed to be even competent.

Critics Rating: 6/10