Mirror Mirror (Movie Review)

Is it possible that Julia Roberts and friends made a good Snow White movie or is that just a Fairy Tale?

 

(TRANSCRIPT)......

I think pop culture has fairy tales on the brain. This year has seen 2 fairy tale TV shows, which I’ve reviewed both of them “Grimm” and “Once Upon a Time”. Now the first of two Fairy Tale movies coming out, in fact two specifically about Snow White that are coming out this year. This one is Mirror Mirror, and of course Snow White and the Huntsman coming out later this summer.

Mirror Mirror is a movie starring Julia Roberts as the wicked queen and her battle to destroy Snow White. It’s the Snow White story you know. Now there is a little bit of a spin on it, it kinda takes a lot of the things you know about the Snow White story from the Disney version, or maybe other versions, and turns them on their head just a little bit.  For instance, the dwarves are not the Happy, Sneezy, Doc, Sleepy that you know...they actually have names like Half Pint and Grimm and others.  They still kind of fall into those Archetypes but it’s not as clearly defined as the animated movie was.  So things like that just kind of make it a little bit different in where the story goes as well.

This movie’s really not that bad, I say that bc I expected it to be awful and it’s really not.  It’s fun at times. Visually it is certainly a world created very specifically to be vibrant and beautiful.  The costuming and all that is over the top in really a fairy tale kind of a way, something you would expect.

Julie Roberts gives a decent performance. I had forgotten how vibrant she is on screen. She’s a captivating screen presence and it’s no surprise she’s been a movie star the way she has cause even now she comes on screen and she just lights it up. There’s something about her smile, her face. She does a great job in this role, a role that is really kinda icky, kind of evil. Not kinda, it is... it’s the Evil Queen. She does a phenomenal job with that.

The humor, I think I mentioned, is great and very funny.  Now where I had difficulty with this movie is that it’s a little too light hearted.  It doesn’t take itself even quite seriously enough.   There are throw away lines in this movie that are distracting bc they take you out of the fairy tale world and bring you into the real world.  I think there’s actually a line about ‘focus groups’ in this movie that I just kinda went ‘whoa, that doesn’t exist in fairy tale world, what is he talking about?’   So it doesn’t take itself seriously enough in my opinion.  Something that a kid is not going to catch but for me was kinda like ‘eh’.  I wish it would have at least respected the story a little more than that, but that’s minor.

It’s not a great movie, I don’t mean to say it’s a great movie. But I think it is a good movie and certainly if you’re looking to take the family to see something there are worse movies you could be locked up in a theater for two hours with your children.  This one is bearable.