Snow White and the Huntsman was incredibly disappointing. It has a lot of the elements that a great film needs--complex themes; excellent style through costuming, set design, and cinematography; an amazing score (by James Newton Howard); and interesting characters--but the pieces don't quite fit together to form a satisfying whole.
The script is all over the place, but it's no wonder, with 3 writers credited for the screenplay. Lots of great ideas pop up here and there, but many of them aren't explored or fully explained. The evil queen rising out of a milky bath makes for a chilling image, but what purpose does it serve the story? Snow White apparently has magic of her own, but the nature of it isn't quite clear--it seems to exist solely to allow her to defeat the queen. The theme of life and light (Snow White) versus death and darkness (the Queen) is hinted at, but there is no direct illustration of it. In an ingenious bit of writing, our heroes come across a village of women who have found a way to protect themselves from the Queen's habit of sucking the youth and beauty out of girls throughout the kingdom, but aside from simply presenting this scenario, not much is done here--I would have liked to see one of these girls befriend Snow White and accompany the protagonists to the end, but the village is just one of many quick stops on the way to forward the plot.
And that seems to be one of the big problems with the film's storytelling--intriguing elements are introduced to progress the plot in some way, but the elements themselves aren't given much thought. Many of these elements were characters. The dwarves, for example, basically serve as exposition, comic relief (which I really wish had been more prevalent), and as a means to infiltrate the Queen's castle (in a highly ridiculous scene that is hard to take seriously); but we never get to know any of the dwarves as individuals. We never really have a reason to care about them for their own sake.
The writing pretty much fails at character development in general. We get one glimpse of Queen Ravenna's past that adds a tiny drop of sympathy to the character, but it's not enough to really make us sorry for her. Even the main character, Snow White, is not completely believable as a leader of armies and killer of evil due to a lack of inner turmoil and personal growth. She spends the majority of the film being led and saved by others, then all of a sudden, when it's necessary, she just "knows what to do."
The one part of this movie that really makes it worth watching is the character of the Huntsman, beautifully performed by Chris Hemsworth. He's a sympathetic anti-hero who starts out as a raving drunk widower and ends up being the only character to show significant growth over time. I will even admit that I teared up during a monologue of his at a crucial moment in the story. He is the reason I was invested in the outcome. Kristen Stewart's Snow White falls flat as a truly strong protagonist worth rooting for--it was for the Huntsman's sake that I wanted her to win. Even Charlize Theron sometimes goes a touch over the top as the evil Queen Ravenna.
The movie's marketing led us to believe that Snow White and the Huntsman would be a new twist on a familiar fairy tale, but there's not much real innovation to be found. I REALLY wanted to like this movie, and with just a few tweaks here and there, I'm convinced I could have loved it, but the story just doesn't quite work. First-time feature film director Rupert Sanders obviously has a talent for imagery and motif, but he may need to hone his storytelling skills. The film is far from a disaster, and as a 12-year-old kid, I would have been engrossed (having seen less movies and been less familiar with cliches), but this movie isn't intended for children. The level of violence and dark themes are quite adult; it's just too bad that the telling itself seems rather juvenile, relying too heavily on archetypes and simple answers.
