Qq critiques (les moins négatives) / ImdB

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So much potential ... down the tubes

Author: darth-tobe from Germany
6 June 2012

What a load of nonsense. Those were 127 almost completely redundant minutes. It doesn't happen often but after about the first third I was considering leaving the cinema and only the ticket price kept me in my seat (faut bien dire que lorsqu'on a payé sa place on a tendance à être exigeant) and the vague hope that something might change. It didn't.

Where to start? There was no build-up, no climax (more of an anti-climax actually) and no development of any sort. There was a bunch of characters that fit together awkwardly at best: imagine Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Aragorn, Luke Skywalker and the guys from Hot Fuzz against the Wicked Witch and the Terminator - that about covers it. There was nothing that made you feel one way or the other about the characters since they all had their reasons for doing what they did and ... since it fit the plot it was fine anyway and they didn't need to change.

The whole piece had a plot and general look and feel that couldn't make up its mind if it was going to be Chronicles of Narnia, Joan of Arc or ... Pan's Labyrinth? There were, however, a lot of pointless details that didn't matter to the plot but they were just there - take the queen's background, take the troll bridge, I could go on. There were a lot of over-acted emotions, like the queen screaming at people in slow motion for no apparent reason (both the screaming and the slow motion); and I cannot remember seeing Snow White in any shot in which she did not have tears in her eyes.

I still wonder where they wanted to take this picture. Dark fantasy with sex-appeal and gritty violence might have been a good idea but it seems the writer and production designers were too busy being politically correct to go all the way. There are a few things that I liked, which is why I give the film a 3 but those are just details and would contain spoilers. Like this the film just seems to try and capture as many tastes as possible but delivers nothing really. And then suddenly it's over as if the producer had said: "that's enough now." Maybe that was actually a blessing in disguise. Reading the original fairytale is still more exciting.