An fanciful and luminous film shot in the style of a ballet akin to The Nutcracker or Peter and the Wolf shouldn’t be sabotaged by unnecessary parenthetical snarkiness that riddles its dialogue – but Mirror Mirror does just that. In a way, it’s true to the original Grimm fairy tale in that it tries to distance itself from the classic Disney cartoon (1937). At the same time, it treats its audience like the penurious peasants that occupy the surrounding areas of the Queen’s castle, given hokum to laugh at and silly lines that would evoke chuckles from only the abjectly sarcastic.
Unfortunately, this trend is set in the first few moments as the narrator (The Wicked Queen) tells a tale of a brave king (Sean Bean) eaten by a beast in the woods, the daughter he leaves behind (Lilly Collins as Snow White), and the beautiful widow Queen (Julia Roberts). Within these few minutes of exposition, the narrating Queen parenthetically asks whether the name Snow White could be an y more pretentious and compliments her own beauty three separate times. It is clear we are to see her as the egomaniacal villain, but she really tends to be more annoying and obnoxious than ominous. Perhaps this is what the writers (the slew of them) were going for, or perhaps they felt – as many do now – that eliciting bits of laughter from the audience is the sign of success. However, diluting the screenplay to exchanges in pre-teen text messages seems hardly laudable – and more importantly, jarring. While a depiction of a cartoon character, the Wicked Queen makes it painfully obvious that she is a cartoon character. This is both distracting and detracting. She is made unreal and unbelievable, a constant source of sarcasm.
This is unfortunate in that Tarsem Singh (whose best picture is The Cell) shoots the film beautifully. It’s combat scenes are steadily shot, concise and enjoyable – as is, slightly surprisingly, the eighties-like montage that grooms Snow White from delicate flower to formidable fencer (both in the larceny sense and the fighting sense). It seems she becomes a new version of herself in the span of a horse ride from the castle to the woods, but I digress and suspend my disbelief for a few moments. She’s not presented as a dullard, so perhaps she’s a super – really super – fast learner.
In addition, Julia Roberts – despite the scripted condescension – is fun to watch as the queen. Even though her character is over-written, Roberts keeps a stony demeanor and lets out her characteristic smile and laugh at moments that contradict previous roles of sweetheart do-gooder. Perhaps this is pleasant because it plays with my sense of nostalgia, or perhaps it’s because her pleasure in misery is believable. I won’t discount either and would go so far as to suggest that Roberts is the best part of the film – though Collins is a fine Snow White and the bickering dwarves are enjoyable as well.
In what could have been a good film – and, if nothing else, one that plays on the recent fairy-tale fad – the writers downplayed their abilities and, at times, substituted quality with something they assumed would appeal to audiences. Perhaps it did. The first weekend took in close to $20million, ultimately taking in nearly $70million. Perhaps this is just another film on the list of films taking too literally its PG rating and treating its audience as a whole like children unable to focus on anything but spectacle.
