'Snow White and the Huntsman' bogged down by gritty overtones

Repackaging older stories for younger generations is a trend that has long been a Hollywood staple, existing in higher prevalence today sheerly due to the overexposure of film in pop culture today. Unfortunately the recent pattern of dumbing down fairy tales into pseudo gritty teenage harlequin romances has quickly proven to be one of the most obnoxious in the least amount of time. With this in mind, I kept my expectations for "Snow White and the Huntsman" relatively low and while it has far exceeded the substantially low bar of quality set by films such as "Red Riding Hood" and "Beastly," this trend has a long way to go before reaching the territory of actually being entertaining.

The film essentially follows the "Snow White" fairy tale as if it were set in Middle Earth. Snow White -played by Kristen Stewart- is the princess of an unnamed kingdom which is currently under the rule of Ravenna, the evil witch and queen -Charlize Theron-  who seduces her father, conquers his kingdom and keeps her prisoner for years as she uses his resources to dominate the world. After making her escape as an adult, Snow White enlists the help of a Huntsman -Chris Hemsworth- to make her way to a friendly kingdom in order to wage war against Ravenna's tyrannical reign.

Adapting any fairy tale due to their typically short length and vague nature of the narratives and "Snow White and the Huntsman" is no different. Try as hard as it may to make Ravenna a three dimensional character, she just can't escape the bland villain role that she is cast in. The narrative convenience behind Snow White's inevitable escape in and of itself is a stretch but the escape itself is highly questionable as well, given that she would have had to run at least a mile or two after being kept captive and given only food scraps in a dark cell for years. Given the nature of the film, I could forgive oversights such as these even if time is wasted trying and failing to accomplish such a task. Unfortunately, "Snow White and the Huntsman" falls back on such laziness far too often for its own good.

The entire climax of the film is built on the idea of Snow White becoming an action heroine; a notion that is not even remotely built up to. She spends the grand majority of the film running from fights or leading the enemy on for the Huntsman to take them down. Not once does the film play with the idea of her being independent up to this point.

Several of the elements of the original story feel crowbarred in, not simply existing for narrative convenience but lacking any sort of logical explanation at all but the biggest sin of "Snow White and the Huntsman" is that it is mostly just plain boring. The movie takes itself so deathly seriously that any sense of whimsy, adventure, or fun is almost nonexistent. As forced as the last third of the film feels, I have to at least give it credit for being somewhat entertaining, as I struggled to stay awake for a lot of this movie.

Kristen Stewart proves herself to simply be a rather poor actress, as she is incapable of emoting any expression other than staring intensely and blankly. Her lack of charisma prevents the injection of any actual character into Snow White herself, which makes many scenes of the movie drag. Fortunately, Hemsworth proves himself capable of picking up the slack in the department of charm, providing an endearing scoundrel that remains the most likeable character of the film for a grand majority of its running time.

The seven dwarves bring the injection of life that the film so desperately needs. Played by Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Johnny Harris, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, Ray Winstone, Brian Gleeson and Nick Frost, they rendered in fantastic CGI and seem to be the few of the cast that are actually enjoying their job. Conversely, Theron plays the queen as a hammy cartoon character, complete with screaming at her henchmen for failures and occasionally stretching syllables in regular speech.

All complaints aside, I will commend "Snow White and the Huntsman" for having well shot action and spectacular aesthetic and set design, despite the excessive amount of grit. I just wish it was enough to overlook how underwritten the film is and what little excitement I actually felt with anything happening on screen. Going in expecting very little I was rather disappointed to find myself getting just that, yet wanting much more.

C-