Reviews
The Los Angeles Times
Betsy Sharkey
“Perhaps they are saving the passion for the sequel, for it seems there is surely one to come after director Rupert Sanders' brilliantly inventive debut. The film's Alexander McQueen-esque illusions of grandeur do a very good job of masking its flaws, and for the story, Evan Daugherty has conjured up a serious feminist twist on the ages old fable ... The bones of the tale remain as the Brothers Grimm envisioned it — a villainess queen obsessed with beauty, a truth-telling mirror, a fairer and far younger Snow White, helpful hapless dwarfs, a poison apple and the power of true love's kiss. But it's the way in which the filmmakers have fleshed things out that makes the magic happen. The best addition is a drunken mercenary in the Huntsman, who is pressed by the Queen to track down Snow White.”
01/06/2012
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The New York Times
A. O. Scott
“The evil stepmothers of the past have been monsters of self-generating female narcissism, but Ravenna seems to be a woman with a legitimate grudge against a male-dominated world of sexual violence and patriarchal entitlement. With a slight shift of emphasis, Snow White and the Huntsman might have been her story, the tale of a victim turned righteous avenger. And it may be that being denied this status fuels Ravenna’s resentment.”
31/05/2012
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The Sunday Times
Cosmo Landesman
“Theron is a great baddy stepmum, a mix of Lady Macbeth and the psycho-feminist Valerie Solanas. Stewart looks good, but can’t deliver lines with any conviction. Still, there’s a real spooky edge to the story, and an undercurrent of pervy sexiness that keeps it from being too sweet and soft.”
03/06/2012
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Empire Magazine
Dan Jolin
“Not that Kristen Stewart is inherently bad as Snow. Just that she needs to be directed away from all those little tics which five-or-six bouts of Bella have ingrained in her. Stewart won’t stop doing that thing where she looks like she’s just tasted something unpleasant then smiles like it hurts a little bit. It’s as if Snow White spends the whole movie having just taken a bite of that poisoned apple.”
28/05/2012
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The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
“Stewart makes a decent stab at turning her into a proto-feminist warrior, despite sporting a fluctuating English accent that makes her sound like a karaoke version of Keira Knightley circa King Arthur. As the Huntsman, Thor star Chris Hemsworth has similarly deleterious accent issues courtesy of a peculiarly gruff Scottish brogue that makes me wonder why they didn’t just cast Gerard Butler and be done with it. ”
31/05/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Tim Robey
“Snow White didn’t exist, but if historians of the future were told otherwise, this year’s rival biopics Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman might present them with a singularly baffling double bill. Just who was this bipolar princess? Did she smile constantly, or never? And her domain — was it a fabulously lacquered chocolate-box playground, or some yet-to-be-explored peninsula of Mordor? As exhibits for a personality profile — and also as mass-market blockbusters, for rather different audiences — the two movies are chalk and cheese. It’s certainly hard to imagine Kristen Stewart’s incarnation of Snow White attempting to whistle while she worked — all you’d get is a pained screech.”
28/05/2012
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The Times
Kate Muir
“This parallels Alice in Wonderland, a film from some of the same producers, which saw Alice toss aside the teapot for a sword and armour to battle the Jabberwock. There is an interesting feminist strain in both fairytale adaptions where the sentiment “One day my Prince will come!” has been replaced by “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I’ll sort it out myself”.”
01/06/2012
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The Observer
Philip French
“The eight dwarves ... resemble a reunion of superannuated department store Santas who've been sleeping rough. ”
03/06/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Nicholas Barber
“I'm at a loss as to who's going to enjoy it. It's too miserable for Disney Princess collectors, and yet, beneath the Tolkienesque trappings, the story remains as saccharine as when Uncle Walt told it, so it's hardly going to satisfy Game of Thrones devotees. ”
03/06/2012
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
“It all becomes very drawn out, and like Mirror Mirror, tries to fix what isn't broken: the poignant clarity of Snow White being betrayed by a non-mother and then having to be a quasi-mother to seven little people. That is evidently far too babyish and needs to be sexed up, or rather teen-abstinenced up. The result is tangled and overblown.”
31/05/2012
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The Independent
Geoffrey MacNab
“An epic exercise in kitsch, this fantasy adventure takes the Snow White fairly tale and combines it with lashings of Arthurian swordplay, Narnia-like mysticism and Highlander-style preposterousness.”
01/06/2012
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andres
“Featuring ... as the seven vertically challenged miners, a cast of Brits (including Ray Winstone, Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane) for whose judgment you weep and for whose future – or those of their agents – you tremble.”
31/05/2012
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Time Out
Tom Huddleston
“The dwarfs turn up, and the true horror begins. Wait, that’s not Bob Hoskins is it? And it can’t possibly be… Ray Winstone? But it is – and Toby Jones, Ian McShane, Nick Frost, Johnny Harris and Eddie Marsan, too. The cream of British acting talent has been digitally shrunken and saddled with haircuts that make them look like a midget Slade tribute band, gambolling about in a forest glade so sickeningly CG-sweet it looks like an advert for air freshener.”
30/05/2012
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