Julia Roberts and Lily Collins star in Relativity Media’s Mirror Mirror. (Credit: Jan Thijs/Relativity Media)
“Mirror Mirror” A Subpar Sitcom In Snazzy Surroundings
Rated PG
Grade: D+
By MICHAEL WALTERS
Cantankerous Critic
“Mirror Mirror” is a visually lush retelling of the story of Snow White, but shows signs of creative exhaustion before the opening sequence is over.
Julia Roberts is the wicked queen looking to keep Snow White in her place and marry a young prince to deliver her kingdom from financial difficulties caused by years of her lavish free spending ways. The idea is sound — tell the story from the point of view of the wicked queen instead of the black-haired dwarf lover — but it starts at tedious and goes purely downhill from there.
Normally, Julia Roberts has to do little more than smile and let out that laugh to win over her audience. But she fails to cast a spell this time. The chief problem here is the script which piles on cheap jokes and one-liners that wouldn’t entertain a pre-school class of four years olds much less a paying audience of adults and children with higher levels of intelligence. She’s saddled with material that wouldn’t work on “Once Upon A Time” or the 80′s snow white sitcom “The Charmings.” And Roberts can only deliver so many lame punchlines before she develops a sense of dread on her face at the dozens more that await her and us.
Armie Hammer and Nathan Lane don’t fare any better either, with both forced into spectacularly misguided attempts at slapstick which land with a thud like a dwarf falling from a tree. And speaking of the dwarfs the only word to describe them is Dopey.
Director Tarsem Singh creates a visually beautiful fairy tale landscape which curiously alternates between overwhelmingly lush scenery full of dreamlike images and spartan fake looking backdrops which barely even bother to conceal the sound stages they’re obviously shooting on.
The first of this year’s Snow White pictures sets the bar so low, even the dead eyed vortex of suckitude Kristen Stewart might be able to sail above it. I’m not exactly looking forward to her turn in “Snow White and The Huntsman,” but it’s gotta be better than this.
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