The big thing that‘s going to separate Mirror Mirror from other tellings of the Snow White story is that it’s so visually interesting. In fact, that’s pretty much the first thing everyone always notices about Tarsem Singh’s (The Cell, The Fall) movies. They’re full of strange imagery and intricate production design, and you can really lose yourself while taking in all the imagery. For about ten minutes. Then you start wanting things like memorable characters or an engaging story to creep into the production as well. And, unfortunately, I’ve yet to see Singh paired up with material that accomplishes this.
Seeing as Mirror Mirror is little more than a kitschy re-telling of the Snow White fable that seldom takes itself seriously, this isn’t going to be the film that makes me turn the corner on the guy as a director, either. What this movie seems to strive to be is a safe for kids adventure that adults can smirk along with because of its quirky sense of humor and self-aware references. But what it ends up being is a boring, self-satisfied chore that is occasionally interesting to look at. If I wanted to watch something like that, I'd probably just rent Shrek.
Despite the fact that this is very much the Snow White story, Mirror Mirror spends so much time focusing on the Evil Queen character that it almost feels like her film. This is likely the case because we’ve got Julia Roberts playing the Queen, and Julia Roberts is a great big star; but taking the focus off of Snow (Lily Collins) and putting it on the Queen is one of the big reasons this film sinks rather than swims. The Queen we get here is very quippy. She’s a motor-mouthed, self-aware reference machine, and the character really gives Roberts and excuse to show off and chew some scenery. The problem is, though Roberts is okay in most dramatic roles—and though she has a certain, undefinable star quality—she is in no way funny. Like, at all. And watching her try and fail to make this evil woman darkly amusing over and over again feels like what it would be like if you gave a just starting out, open mic night comic an hour long HBO special and told them to just go nuts. She flounders early, she drowns somewhere in the middle, and then you have to watch her corpse float around for a while and get bloated, because the show just refuses to end.
Though she doesn’t get the focus that she perhaps should, Lily Collins at least fares better than Roberts when it comes to playing our protagonist. As Snow, she’s mostly just asked to be sugary sweet and super cute, and she manages to pull that off with aplomb. Seeing as this is the first role I’ve really noticed her in, I’m still not certain if she has any real acting chops or not, however. While I liked her here, she’s, once again, not asked to do much; and I do have to admit that the whole time I was watching her princess routine play out I was wishing that they could have cast someone I really love like Alison Brie in the role instead. Collins is cute and charismatic, but she doesn’t manage to muster up any of the humor or satire that, say, Amy Adams was able to while playing a similar role in Enchanted. Whether that was a limitation of the actress or a limitation of the material remains to be seen.
The one big trick this film has up its sleeve is Armie Hammer’s performance as the relatively clueless love interest, Prince Alcott. Hammer is asked to go along with a lot of ridiculous stuff over the course of this film, stuff that most other actors would have been completely embarrassing trying to pull off, and he does it so straight faced and with so much committed glee that you can’t help but be charmed by him. I mean, he spends a huge chunk of this film hammering home the same joke that a magic spell has made him act like a puppy, and in his hands it never even gets annoying. Probably this young actor is some sort of miracle worker. Don’t be surprised if he starts performing faith healings at some point in his career.
Putting the performances aside, I’ve called this movie a bore, and I think I should expand on that a bit. One of the main problems with this film as a story is that there’s never a clear path that it’s traveling down. There’s never an end goal you’re anticipating that keeps you engaged in the happenings on the screen. Yes, it’s established that the Queen is evil, and that Snow White eventually has to get rid of her and take her place; but there’s never a plan as to how that’s going to happen. One random event occurs after another, and then it eventually leads to a big, climactic battle. Rather than a coherent story that’s being told step by step, it feels like you’re just watching a random series of occurrences; something like real life (which sucks).
Not much of what happens makes any sense or holds up under scrutiny either. I’m not asking for a ton of logic in a story that is very clearly a children’s fairy tale, but when the Seven Dwarves are reticent to let Snow White stay at their place because they’re afraid her presence might attract the attention of the Queen’s men, and then two seconds later they leave to go rob the Queen’s men, I just have to throw my hands up in frustration. I mean, this movie has a training montage where Snow White learns to be a warrior over the course of what must have been a few hours, and I have no problem with that. That’s the sort of stupidity you expect from an escapist tale like this, and I even celebrate that stuff to a point. But don’t establish a character motivation just to completely contradict it seconds later. That makes me feel like what I’m watching doesn’t matter.
Looking at the big picture, this movie fails to entertain simply because it just doesn’t work on very many levels. It’s always trying to be funny. It’s always trying to be funny to the point where it’s clear that, in the heads of the screenwriters (Melissa Wallack and Jason Keller), this is a laugh a minute comedy. But never is this movie funny. And Julia Roberts isn’t the only culprit when it comes to the failed humor. The whole of this film is packed full of borderline-Meta quips, and not a single one works well enough to conjure so much as a smirk. And, for that matter, it seems more than a little misogynist and disingenuous to write a movie where the Princess character explains in a very self-aware way that she’s going to flip the usual script of the Prince saving the Princess, but also give us several scenes where she tries to sword fight men and gets repeatedly humiliated and slapped on her ass. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that sexism in a movie is an inherent turnoff. I’m not trying to be the morality police here. But don’t pretend like you’re progressive and then be gross. That’s just insulting, and, once again, makes me feel that what I’m watching is a waste of time.
The failed humor is the big swing-and-a-miss that permeates the whole movie, but Mirror Mirror doesn’t end things there. It stands at the plate and makes it all the way to strike three. The dramatic moments in the movie, where we’re asked to care more than we should about a barely there love story, are also a big miss. They just thankfully don’t come as often as the jokes. And the big battle sequence at the end is also a pretty miserable failure. It’s not visually impressive, well choreographed, or fun in any other way, and it made me question why this movie had to introduce so much swordplay and build to a big battle finale in the first place. Strike three and you’re out.
Mirror Mirror probably hits its high point in its first couple minutes, where a gorgeous sequence involving marionettes catches us up on where we are in the life of Snow White. Unfortunately, even that scene is sullied by the unfunny Julia Roberts narration that plays over it. Singh is lucky that he’s relatively talented at designing sets and costumes, and that Lily Collins and Armie Hammer are both pretty cute, or watching this movie could have been a truly unpleasant experience. As is, I’ll rate it one star above the bare minimum.
