Snow White And The Huntsman
Certificate: 12A
Director: Rupert Sanders
Run time: 127 minutes
Starring:
Kristen Stewart
Chris Hemsworth
Charlize Theron
Sam Claflin
I recently watched the new film, Snow White and the Huntsman and I am sure that everyone reading this will be able to realise that it is based off of the traditional fairy tale; Snow white. Other than the plot line this film is nothing like the original fairy tale that we all know so well. Obviously this is done purposefully to give the story a fresh viewpoint and make it something that people will want to watch and won't be limited to young children as the fairy tale version has always been.
My first thoughts were that the fresh take on this fairy tale was really good idea, and I still think this is true. However I don't think this film was done as well as it could have been. As the movie progressed it seemed to get worse (and it didn't start off to great either) sadly it got extremely boring and I felt the strong urge to walk out of the cinema, on the other hand I hate to give up on a film so decided to stick it out and finish it. In many ways I'm glad I did as the end fight scene did become quite good with some really exciting fighting although the overall battle was very short, somewhat underwhelming and lacking in the serious action that I had hoped for.There were a fair few redeeming features of this movie which I'll get to soon but for now More bad points ! Woo.
Kristen Stewart's acting in this film is genuinely awful, I swear her facial expression never changes! Her voice rarely seems to have any energy behind it and seems to be a monotone throughout. She never seems to change and even in one scene (Wont say to much, No spoilers) when she is meant to be giving an inspiring speech there is so little feeling and enthusiasm that I cant imagine the speech inspiring anyone. What positive points of her acting that there are, are easily seen through and we can tell that they are clearly forced, it certainly isn't the naturalistic acting that so many other actors are capable of. In short I really believe that her acting abilities do kill this film, of course she cant be completely blamed but really my major problems with this film are entirely centred around her and her acting. So back to the inspiring speech that I mentioned, my first thought was "This is the least inspiring speech I've ever heard." now obviously it isn't going to be a speech of Braveheart quality but I really expected something a bit better than what Stewart delivered.
So onto the good points, Charlize Theron players her role extremely well, she seems to make the perfect evil queen and unlike Stewart, her acting is pretty good, she shows her anger and hatred very well and she does a great job in her supporting role. Chris Hemsworth does a decent job in this film also, but as his character is so key it would have been nicer to hear a bit more about his past as it is clearly a bit reason for why his character is the way that he is.
For me the highlight of this film was the dwarves, its difficult to say why I loved them so much as they didn't even have a lot of individual screen time. But what I did see was very good, they were all very well cast with actors like Ray Winston, Nick Frost and Ian McShane to name a few. It would have been good to see more from the dwarves and even give them a bit of an explanation and a clearer introduction.
My final good point on this film is the action scenes that we are presented with, although many of the fight scenes are very short what we are given are fast, fluid, exciting fights that are actually pretty good and give a bit of energy to the film.
Overall I think that this film was little more than average. It would have certainly been a lot better without Kristen Stewart as the rest of the film was fairly good, and in fairness the rest of the actors did a great job. Its just a shame Snow White was so poorly cast. The film really didn't live up to what I thought it could have been and to be honest it was fairly underwhelming. I would probably rate this film as a 6/10, as although I didn't really like it there were some good, redeeming features that made it a lot better.
Watch the trailer here and make up your own mind!
