Review of Snow White & The Huntsman

As I mentioned last night, I got free movie passes to see Snow White & The Huntsman before it comes out tomorrow. I thought I would share my thoughts on the movie here - I promise, I'll keep it short.

Also, there may be SPOILERS ahead...

First and foremost, I went into this movie expecting the absolute worse. I wanted to see it and give it a chance, but I honestly didn't want to spend money on it. Why? Kristen Stewart. The trailers made it look pretty cool, but I knew it was going to be ruined by her atrocious acting. When I got the free pass, I jumped at the opportunity to see it for free.

So, the movie - it starts off with a cliche fairy tale beginning, and runs through the history of Snow White, her mother & father, the kingdom, and how her father marries the evil queen. Yadda yadda yadda. Fast forward 15 years, and Snow White's grown up and the evil queen is... evil. Got it. Charlize Theron, as the Evil Queen Ravenna starts her evil debut in the movie with a bang. She's shown eating the heart of a bird with her claw ring. That scene was both disgusting and awesome.

Snow White escapes and, in a Disney-like fashion, two birds lead her out of the castle and to the beach... where a horse is waiting. WHAT!? I was not the only one in the theatre to have a confused reaction to that. Anyway, she escapes into the dark forest. This rendition of the forest was pretty cool - everything wasn't just attacking her because it's dark - they gave it a reason. She fell onto some mushroom-type things that released a large plume of spores that made her semi-hallucinate. Then you get to see the "true" darkness of the forest.

The Queen's brother gets the Huntsman to go after her in the woods. He goes after her in the woods, and very quickly goes to Snow White's side and helps her. ...why? I was expecting him to be hunting her for more than 5 seconds. I thought that would have made for a much better story than the odd love triangle that developed. Surprise, surprise. I'm getting tired of Hollywood doing these love triangles for these little 16 year old girls. While traveling with the Huntsman (who NEVER even gets a name), they come across a troll under the bridge - which was the most interesting design of a troll I've seen. It was like the bridge was actually part of him while he hunched over it. My problem with the troll was... they didn't need to go over the bridge. It was the tiniest little thing in the middle of the woods - go around it!!

Other things happen, they meet the dwarfs - I snickered at them a few times but they were kind of annoying. The fairy forest was AMAZING, they definitely didn't skimp out on the CGI. There was a deer that reminded me of the deer god in Princess Mononoke, but only because of the fact that it was a deer and had crazy antlers.

The rest of the movie was a lot of battling and things... and this is where Kristen Stewart actually had some lines. >GASP< Not only does this girl have NO facial expressions, but she is terrible at delivering lines. I think they could have gotten any other actress to do a much better job. Olivia Wilde, anyone?

This review is starting to go longer than I expected, so I'll wrap this up.

The biggest thing that bothered me was the cinematography. Most of the movie was stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. They mastered the lighting and the color adjustments... EXCEPT for the battle sequences with the Huntsman - they were grimy, confusing and lackluster. They were not up to par with the rest of the movie.

Besides the Evil Queen, the movie was okay. Honestly. I will definitely buy it on Bluray when it comes out for the special features, because the CGI was topnotch.