By John Corrado

Disney has built a reliable business model over the past decade around creating live-action remakes of their various animated classics. The latest such film is Snow White, their beleaguered reimagining of 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which holds an extra special place in the studio’s history as their first ever animated feature.

Which is why this new version, directed by Marc Webb, has such a tricky balance to pull off. The film has to try and thread the needle between paying tribute to the animated classic, while also trying to update it for current times. But we are left with something that feels like it wants to have its cake and eat it too.

The screenplay, which is credited to Erin Cressida Wilson (with a league of other writers attached at various points in production, including Greta Gerwig), makes some changes to its source material to match more modern sensibilities. But a lot of these updates feel pointless and unnecessary.

Rachel Zegler stars as Snow White, who in this version got her name from being born in a snowstorm as opposed to her complexion (Zegler is of Colombian descent). We first meet her as a young royal (played by Emilia Faucher) singing and dancing through her father’s (Hadley Fraser) kingdom, which serves as a sort of communist utopia. Resources are distributed equally among their subjects, who are depicted as happy, dancing peasants gladly accepting baked goods from the royals.

But this all changes when Snow White’s mother (Lorena Andrea) dies, her father remarries, and an Evil Queen (Gal Gadot) enters the picture as her stepmother. The Evil Queen not only hoards resources for herself, but is also jealous of Snow White’s looks, obsessively confiding in the Magic Mirror (voice of Patrick Page) who assures her she is still the “fairest of them all.” She locks the Princess away in the castle to scrub the floors so as not to be overshadowed by her.

Snow White gets banished to the magical forest, where she encounters the seven dwarfs, who in this version are seven magical creatures. Due to not wanting to offend anybody by casting real little people as stereotypical “dwarfs,” these are instead computer-generated characters who fall deep into the uncanny valley. Their antics can be amusing, but they look strange and out of place. It also raises deeper concerns about not casting actual actors with dwarfism in these roles.

Songs like “Heigh-Ho” and “Whistle While You Work” still make appearances here, though both are questionably extended. The one song Snow White doesn’t sing is “Someday My Prince Will Come.” The point is that this Snow White can fend for herself. She’s determined and headstrong (which isn’t really the character from the animated film). Zegler, who rubbed many the wrong way when she was initially cast and flippantly criticized the 1937 original as feeling out of touch and in need of an update, isn’t playing a Princess pining after a man to save her.

There’s still a love interest, but he’s no Prince Charming. This version has our Princess falling for Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), who is more of a Robin Hood type; he’s a failed actor and vagrant who frequents the woods with his diverse band of thieves (who themselves seem modelled after the seven dwarfs). Again, a needless update. The two have their “meet cute” moment when she encounters him stealing food from the castle, to redistribute amongst his people. This isn’t a one-sided relationship either, with the two trading barbs back and forth.

The film incorporates in a number of new songs by Dear Evan Hanson and The Greatest Showman songwriters Benji Pasek and Justin Paul, done in their usual Broadway pop style. They range from being pretty good, like Zegler’s big number “Waiting on a Wish” which serves as a decent if generic “I Want” song that allows our lead to belt her heart out early on, to feeling out of place, like the overly quippy “Princess Problems” that lacks sincerity and borders on parody.

It ends up being a lot of padding for a film that doesn’t really have enough plot to fill out the bloated 110 minute running time, especially with a one-note villain who is largely underwhelming. Gadot is given a big villain number here that she handles fairly well, but her portrayal is more camp than frightening or convincing. The film largely lacks any real tension.

The film as a whole is uneven, and feels like it went through a lot of rewrites and reshoots only to end up with a mostly passable final product that neither recaptures the magic of the original nor fully works on its own. We are left with a film that feels so desperate not to offend anyone, that it ends up not really pleasing anyone either (but, to the online critics concerned that the film is too “woke,” I would counter that by saying – some questionable politics aside – it could have been a whole lot worse).

Like a lot of these live-action remakes, Snow White isn’t terrible or unwatchable. There are some decent moments. It’s bright and colourful enough to please its target audience, and the various cartoon animals that our heroine interacts with are cute. But it does feel frustrating when a better version of this story already exists, and pales in comparison to the animated original. It’s an exercise that simply brings to mind that old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Film Rating: ★★ (out of 4)

Snow White opens exclusively in theatres on March 21st.