Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Review: Disney Marathon

Spoilers

So, a few weeks back I finished uni for the year. So, what does one do when they suddenly get all the free time in the world on their hands? Apparently start watching every Disney Classic. The more of them I watched the more I wanted to talk about my opinions on these films. I wanted to talk about where my opinions differed from the masses, and where it aligned. So even though I usually write about games here, who doesn’t love Disney. These reviews will of course be quick. There are 59 of these films, and I don’t really think you’d be interested in 59 highly detailed reviews. So, let’s start with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

I never watched this film growing up, in fact the first time I watched Snow White was about two years back on a Disney cruise. Because of this I have no nostalgic attachment to it, which can’t be said for a lot of these other films.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released back in 1937 and is thought to be the first fully animated feature movie, this is wrong the first was an Argentinian film called ‘El Apóstol’ from 1917. But even though it wasn’t technically the first, it might as well have been. To call Snow White influential would be an understatement.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs follows Snow White as she avoids getting murdered by the Evil Queen. During her escape she meets seven dwarfs who are somehow better characterised in this 1 hour and 23-minute film than the dwarves in The Hobbit Trilogy who we spend like nine hours with. After a lot of singing and dancing the Evil Queen decides to use a magical poison on Snow White which can be undone with true-loves kiss instead of using an actual fucking poison. The Queen dies by a bolt of lightning and apparently true-loves kiss means a stranger you met for like 5 minutes.

As you can see not much really happens in this film, is that a problem, well it depends what characters we are spending that nothing with. Snow White is such a boring character, she’s written to be a misogynist’s ideal woman, so yeah, we get a ten-minute scene of her cleaning and another scene of her just singing to some birds near a well. Whilst this kind of representation of woman is expected during this time period (still isn’t ok), it does lead to a boring lead character. The other characters we spend these nothing scenes with are the seven dwarfs who I’m happy to say are much more entertaining. Each dwarf fits their namesake, but has enough more to their character to make them fun to watch. Yes, we get a ten-minute scene of them entering their own house, but the wonderful slapstick humour that occupancies them, alongside the amusing arguments they get into among themselves makes them fun to watch. They don’t reach the heights of other popular animated characters created around that time like Bugs Bunny or even Disney’s own Mickey Mouse but they are fun enough to watch. The only other character worth mentioning is the Evil Queen, her motive is to be the most beautiful woman in all the lands, Snow White is more beautiful, time for murder. Simple motives like this do work in fairy-tale like stories but the Evil Queen isn’t going to win any best villain awards. So yeah, the story is very inconsequential, I never felt much but it was fine.

Visually the film looks stunning, the hand drawn animation is great and still holds up today. The vibrant colours and detailed locations make the world feel like a painting, this is exemplified by the stillness of the background (which is what all animation looked like around the time) which added to the painting like feeling.

The songs are arguably more iconic than the actual movie although to be honest I’m not a huge fan, so let’s go through them one by one. ‘I’m Wishing’ is a song I genuinely find kind of painful to listen to (off to a good start). ‘One Song’ is so meshed in with ‘I’m Wishing’ I didn’t realise they were meant to be separate songs till I looked at the track listing (so yeah not a fan either). ‘With a Smile and a Song’ is meh, don’t really have an opinion on it. ‘Whistle While You Work’ is definitely somebodies’ favourite, not mine but definitely someone’s. ‘Heigh-Ho’ is the best song on the soundtrack, its catchy and works well in the context of the film, it’s also the most iconic, I wouldn’t listen to it in my own time, but I wouldn’t be against it. ‘Bluddle-Uddle-Um-Dum’ sure is a song. ‘The Silly Song’ might be my least favourite, it reminds me of people who think being random makes them funny or interesting, it doesn’t work for them and it doesn’t work in Snow White. Finally, ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’, I don’t really have anything to say about this song, it sure does exist. So yeah, the soundtrack is iconic and since I literally know nothing about the study of music my critique of it alongside the other Disney soundtracks will be much more based on personal preference, so shouldn’t be taken seriously, you can like any of these songs and that’s cool (you can like any film I dislike either it really doesn’t matter at the end of the day).

Also let’s quickly discuss the racism in the film. The magic mirror implies that the Evil Queen is the second most beautiful person in the world, yet the whole film shows us how ugly she is with her transformation representing her ugly inner self. So that would imply that the mirror goes completely off of physical beauty, ok, guess what her and Snow White have in common? They are both very white people. Snow Whites pale skin is also brought up when talking about how beautiful she is. Yikes. Now I know racism constantly appears in these older Disney titles as that was unfortunately commonplace (and unfortunately still is, just less so in popular media), but it’s interesting that this is rarely talked about whilst films like Dumbo are constantly brought up for their racism (although I think Snow White is a better movie than Dumbo to jump the gun a bit).

So yeah Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was fine, it looked great, had some charming moments but that was about it. I’d say it has aged badly and I would personally skip it but I know I’m in the minority with that sentiment so maybe give it a watch if you haven’t. Next review will be Pinocchio.

5 / 10