After being affected by the pandemic and the SAG-AFTRA strike, Disney’s live-action remake of the 1937 Snow White, the studio’s first-ever animated feature, finally hit cinemas in March 2025, nine years after its announcement. The lead-up to its release was anything but smooth as it carried the weight of online controversies involving its two lead actresses, mostly tied to political opinions and a clumsy, immature critique of the original film. Still, Disney set out to bring the almost 90-year-old classic to modern audiences, and in some ways, they kind of did.
The result lands right in the middle of the studio’s remake spectrum, somewhere between the extremely faithful (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast) and the more imaginative reinterpretations (Cinderella, Pete’s Dragon). And while the two approaches sometimes feel like they’re fighting each other, the end result manages to please both sides.
On one side, you get overly respectful recreations that force the dwarfs to look like exaggerated 1930s cartoon characters. The CGI results are a bit odd, somewhere between creepy and charming, very much like Spielberg’s The BFG, but surprisingly, they work. There’s also a great updated version of the 1937 film’s most famous tune, Heigh-Ho, though its iconic ballad Some Day My Prince Will Come is nowhere to be found. The structure and story beats are mostly unchanged, but there are some meaningful updates: the prince is now a Robin Hood, style love interest with a name and a purpose, there are new songs by Pasek and Paul (of The Greatest Showman, Dear Evan Hansen, and Aladdin’s Speechless), which are actually pretty good, aside from the villain number, All Is Fair, and Snow White herself finally has some real personality.
A lot of criticism has been thrown at Rachel Zegler for her comments about the original film (and yeah, she should’ve dialed it way down), but the truth is, she wasn’t wrong, Snow White was passive, and this version corrects that. Her arc isn’t especially original (it follows the same “find your voice” template Disney’s used for Belle, Jasmine, and Ariel), but what makes it work here is Zegler herself. Full of energy and personality, she brings light to the whole affair and single-handedly makes it worthwhile. She even rescues the CGI dwarfs and makes them work, just by how naturally and enthusiastically she interacts with them, reminded me of Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins. She’s got the voice, the charisma, and finds a great balance in portraying her character’s innocence, kindness, and, later, newfound strength. It’s almost the best live-action princess performance yet (Amy Adams in Enchanted still holds the crown). Broadway’s Andrew Burnap also holds his own as the new love interest, he’s got a great voice, and his warm, believable chemistry with Zegler helps make the romance work.
What holds the film back is the villain and the aesthetics. We’ve seen Gal Gadot demonstrate screen presence before, and she does have a decent singing voice (as shown in Ralph Breaks the Internet), but she’s completely out of her depth when it comes to playing an over-the-top villain and handling the theatrical songs she’s given here. It’s a big, exaggerated role that needed someone who knows how to play loud, someone who could have fun with it or make it genuinely terrifying. Gadot brings neither. The character ends up feeling extremely flat and never menacing, especially in her older form, with those scenes coming off as downright cringeworthy. It’s hard not to compare her to Charlize Theron’s commanding (and non-musical) take in Snow White and the Huntsman, or even Melissa McCarthy’s Ursula in The Little Mermaid, performances that blow Gadot’s out of the water. Instead, she drags the second half of the movie down: there’s little momentum, and barely any sense of danger or suspense.
Similarly artificial is the film’s visual presentation, which often looks like a video game cutscene. Despite some genuinely pretty costumes and a few well-conceptualized sets, these live-action remakes still don’t always feel like actual films. Branagh’s Cinderella and Favreau’s The Jungle Book remain the high watermark for how to make these work. Here, the physics, the way characters move, and the artificial lighting all fall into the same uncanny pitfalls as The Hobbit. Beyond the plasticky look, some of the cuts feel slightly awkward, modern filmmaking just doesn’t let scenes breathe. Even basic dialogue moments feel rushed and oddly framed, like the Queen and Huntsman’s conversation, which jumps straight into close-ups without ever establishing who’s talking to whom. There’s no room to settle in, and that “straight to the point” approach keeps you at a distance.
Still, Zegler holds the whole thing together. She makes the shift between classic and modern songs feel seamless, and her presence ties everything into a surprisingly cohesive package. Don’t expect anything groundbreaking, or even 10% of the creativity that made the 1937 film so iconic (but let’s be honest, no one really expected that). Expect instead a passable live-action remake, boosted by a fantastic lead performance and a sweet little adventure-romance core, and you’ll probably have a good time.
- 1. Sinners
- 2. Shepherds (Bergers)
- 3. The Ballad of Wallis Island
- 4. Kiss of the Spider Woman
- 5. One of Them Days
- 42. Snow White
- Where to watch
Disney+
Disney+
Play trailer
- Original title
- Snow White
- Director
- Marc Webb
- Cast
- Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot, Andrew Burnap, Andrew Barth Feldman, Jeremy Swift, Martin Klebba, Jason Kravits, George Salazar
- Rated
- PG
- Screenwriter
- Erin Cressida Wilson, Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, Philip Keller
- Composer
- Jeff Morrow
- Cinematography
- Mandy Walker, Carlos De Carvalho
- Editor
- Mark Sanger, Sarah Broshar
- Country
- Language
- English
- Budget
- $271.6 million
- Box office
- $205.679 million
- Streaming (CA)
- Disney Plus
- Buy / rent (CA)
- Apple TV Store, Amazon Video