Film Review: Snow White (2025) – A Mirror Image With No Reflection
Disney’s live-action Snow White forgets the magic and misses the mark
When Disney first announced a live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, fans around the world braced themselves. This wasn’t just another reboot. This was the one — the crown jewel of Disney’s animated canon, the one that started it all. You’d hope that if any remake was going to be handled with reverence, creativity, and that elusive Disney magic, it would be this one.
Instead, what we got was a glittery, hollow echo — a film so drenched in CGI and modern messaging that it forgot the fairy tale at its heart. Snow White (2025) isn’t a movie. It’s a PowerPoint presentation with million-dollar effects and no emotional core.
Let’s start with the obvious: this film lacks the charm of the original. The 1937 version, for all its old-fashioned tropes, radiated warmth. Every frame was lovingly hand-drawn. The characters, from the chipper dwarfs to the sinister queen, were full of personality. And Snow White herself? Sweet, kind, and hopeful — a walking ballad to compassion.
In this remake, that entire emotional ecosystem has been replaced with something cold and artificial. It’s like taking a cozy fireplace and swapping it for a flatscreen TV playing a fireplace video on loop.
The titular character is no longer the naïve yet lovable princess we remember. Instead, she’s been rewritten to be assertive and “modern” — which would be great, if the script didn’t confuse empowerment with bland self-seriousness. She spends more time talking about what she doesn’t need (namely, a prince) than showing us who she actually is. And while agency is important, so is nuance. This new Snow White is all mission and no magic.
Her interactions with the dwarfs — sorry, the "mystical forest people" or whatever sanitised label Disney slapped on them — are stiff and awkward. In the original, their bond was the emotional anchor of the story. Here, it's just a subplot with the warmth of a tax seminar. Worse still, the dwarfs themselves are now a mishmash of CGI trickery, motion-captured weirdness, and oddly stilted dialogue. The decision to deviate from the original seven characters (Doc, Grumpy, etc.) might have been well-intentioned, but it robs the story of its soul.
Speaking of soul — let’s talk about the CGI. Good lord. Remember when Disney films had enchanted forests that felt alive? In Snow White (2025), the forest looks like it was rendered in a video game engine during crunch time. The animals are photorealistic to the point of unsettling, the trees have no personality, and every scene feels like it’s trapped inside a green-screen purgatory.
There are moments — brief flickers — where you almost feel something. A musical swell. A flash of color. A line delivery that feels genuine. But those moments are quickly buried under lifeless spectacle and excessive digital effects that never let you breathe. It's visual clutter, not cinematic magic.
The Evil Queen is the only character who really seems to understand the assignment. She’s dramatic, over-the-top, and looks like she wandered in from a better film. But even her best moments are weighed down by CGI overkill — like a potion scene that turns into a Marvel-style light show for no reason whatsoever. Instead of tension, we get tech demo.
Let’s be honest: Disney isn’t trying to make magic anymore. They’re trying to repackage it. And in the process, they’ve lost the very thing that made these stories endure. The original Snow White worked because it was simple, sincere, and emotionally rich. It didn’t need photorealistic animals or action-packed third acts. It just needed heart. And maybe a little whistling while you worked.
This remake? It’s all noise and no song. All mirror, no reflection.
Final Verdict:
Snow White (2025) is a cautionary tale of what happens when studios value optics over artistry. It’s a story we know and love, told through a filter of overproduction, creative hesitation, and corporate sanitisation. For a film about finding inner beauty and connection, it feels strangely soulless.
Rating: 2 out of 5 poisoned apples. One for the costume department. The other for the poor CGI squirrel who tried his best.