FILM CORNER - Heigh-No! Disney's Worst Remake: An Honest Review of Snow White (2025)

This abomination shouldn't have been made!

I'm going to apologize in advance for how angry this review is going to be, but what I experienced at my local cinema has done nothing but made me angry.

Unless you have been living under a rock, 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs made a big impact when it was released by RKO Radio Pictures and produced by Walt Disney Productions. Walt Disney took a serious gamble with the film as most of the press thought that the film will fail to the point that they called it "Disney's Folly." Up to the point where he put his own house on mortgage where the film had a budget of $1.5 million, the film became a huge success, and left an impact for Walt Disney that lasted for almost 88 years. It was even one of the first films to be inducted to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1989.

But no one from the cast and crew, or even Walt Disney himself, will know what would happen almost 88 years after the film's release.

Present day.

The Walt Disney Company releases what would have to be their most controversial movie of all time: Snow White.

This remake is terrible, and I do mean terrible. I can discuss all the behind the scenes and promotional drama and controversy that built up to this point, but my focus will be on the film itself. Never have I watched a remake of a Disney classic that pissed me off this hard.

I saw 2019's The Lion King which was bad but it was more bland and boring bad like the remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. I saw the 2022 Disney Plus exclusive remake of Pinocchio, which didn't have the heart that the original had, but the scene where the living wooden puppet smells and tries to touch a pile of horse manure tells you how bad it is and knows it.

This film however retains nothing but envy it has for the original. It is definitely proof that the heads of Disney doesn't care for quality entertainment like it use to do.

What does this film retain from the original: Well, there's Snow White, the Evil Queen (who turns herself into a hag to give Snow White the poisoned apple), the Dwarves (who are CGI abominations that look like they belong in a mediocre video game released within the last generation), the Magic Mirror, the Huntsman (who warns Snow White of the Queen wanting her dead), and three (and yes I said three) songs from the original movie: "Heigh-Ho!," "Whistle While You Work," and "The Silly Song (The Dwarfs' Yodel Song)."

You probably see that the Prince and the other songs like "I'm Wishing," "One Song," "With a Smile and a Song," "Bluddle-Uddle-Um-Dum (The Dwarfs' Washing Song)," and the song that made a lasting impact within both Disney music and the music industry in general, "Someday My Prince Will Come," are completely missing. That is because Disney decided to cut these elements out of the remake to make the film "less dated" by wanting Snow White to be an independent strong feminine character that needs no prince, and replace the cut music with forgettable modern day, Pop-based, Broadway sounding songs by the team behind the overrated crap-fest that is The Greatest Showman, Pasek and Paul.

Instead of a Prince, the only "true love" that comes to Snow White is a captain of a band of bandits named Jonathan. Yes, a bandit is Snow White's true love in this film. If I wanted to see a movie about a bandit and a princess being in love, I would watch any adaptation of Robin Hood.

Going for the stuff that was kept, the dwarves have been one of the big complaints as the characters are CGI instead of played by actual actors, and their involvement with much of the story as they have in the original have been cut down to them just being there.

The evil Queen, played by Wonder Woman's Gal Gadot is definitely evil, but at points, she comes off as either cut out villain or cartoony villain. She even sings a song called "All is Fair," which is bad. Also, as much as I love Gal Gadot, she couldn't even save this movie, and I felt more pain for her the more I saw her on screen.

Let's go to Snow White herself. In the original, she was voiced by the extremely talented Adriana Caselotti, who sung with her amazing operatic soprano voice that stuck with her until her death in 1997. In this remake, she is played by Rachel Zegler, who is bland, and her "singing" goes to being either nasally or just talking at times. Her acting is just as bland as well as she doesn't come off fair, but unemotional.

Certain scenes that are close to the original fail as much as the acting and music. There was one moment during the scene where Snow White was running into the woods after the Huntsman warns her about the Queen where I thought the trees grabbing Snow White where about to pull an Evil Dead on her, which I'm shocked that moment reminded me of something that terrible from a horror film. The animals (like the dwarves are portrayed in CGI) came off more as uncanny valley and unnatural than sweet or adorable like the traditionally animated ones in the original.

With my final thoughts, to quote the late Roger Ebert in his review of North (1994), "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."

This movie was not worth the $9.08 (which includes the service charge and sales tax) I paid to see! Disney should be ashamed of themselves for even thinking of making it! I wouldn't doubt that if Walt Disney's spirit came back from the dead to see it, he would absolutely hate it as well! This remake does nothing but tarnish the legacy of a film seen and loved by generations.

To even add more insult to injury, when I went to see this movie, only five people where in the screening room. This included myself, a middle-aged couple, and a couple that were either high school or early college age. At one point, either the husband or the wife of the middle-aged couple fell asleep and began snoring, which I found more entertaining than the movie. At the end, the only ones who were vocal about the movie being "good" was the younger couple, which makes sort of sense as much of the younger generation can't recognize garbage in front of them when it is obviously in front of them.

I don't recommend anyone to see this movie at all! I wouldn't recommend it to my friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, or even my worst enemy! All I can say is for you to skip this soulless for-profit abomination of a film, and watch the original animated classic either on DVD, Blu-ray, 4K, digital, or streaming.

Again, I apologize to the readers of this review of how angry this one was. This movie should've never been made.