Mirror Mirror (2012) Movie Review

If you've seen the trailer you'll know that Mirror, Mirror is a Snow White story. Left to my own devices I probably wouldn't have gone near it with a ten foot pole, but I watched it with someone. Overall, it wasn't a bad experience, but there were several annoyances that hurt the world-building and this prevented me from immersing myself in it completely. 

World Building: Shoddy 

Characterization: Depending on the character - strays into the one-dimensional 

Plot: Decent 

SPOILERS AHEAD

Like I said above, this is a watchable movie. In my opinion, it's much more watchable than the Disney version (which I can't stand). First of all, it doesn't follow the typical story-line, so at least I wasn't sure exactly what was about to happen. That is, I knew they would live happily ever after and all that, but there were twists along the way that helped decrease the boredom. There were also awesome dwarfs. 

I can't stress enough how much I liked the take on the dwarfs. Instead of being these nice cute little guys with colorful hats that work hard they're actually a band of thieves. Not only that, but they use stilts on their thieving missions. It really worked. I also really liked the way the prince and his friend reacted to them when they realized they were being attacked by tiny dwarfs - and the dwarfs' form of payback! 

...wow, I never thought it would be so irritating to keep writing dwarfs ... LoTR has taught me to say dwarves all the time. Nevertheless... 

The other thing I liked was their attempt to give Snow White more independence in the story. Instead of waiting around and getting saved by the prince she actually does stuff - or attempts to do stuff. This is good. The only problem is that it wasn't executed in the most convincing way. Also, why is it that both the dwarfs and the prince slap her on the butt with the swords? This, and some other quick things seem to take away from the supposedly positive female role... *shudder* I would have ignored this as someone thinking they were being funny if the writers/producer had actually allowed Snow to come through on her decision to be the one to save the day. But they don't. She has about two minutes of running around frantically in the woods before the prince - and then the dwarfs - show up and help. Because of this, the whole "change the ending, save myself/this is my fight" stuff seems hollow. 

It's probably clear by now that I think world-building is key to a good sci-fi or fantasy story. Even a fairy-tale should at least attempt to build a coherent, realistic world in which the reader/viewer can immerse themselves. This is one of many movies that just don't do that for me and I don't think that the people behind it were even trying...

World Building: 

Visually, the first thing that stuck out to me was the castle. It didn't look real. I'm not an expert at this, but just from my viewer perspective I found it very hard to convince myself that the castle we were looking at from the outside wasn't just a model - or even one of those fancy decorated cakes. It looked like it was about three inches high. The costumes at the wedding also didn't work to well for me. They all felt way too over-the-top and unconvincing. On the other hand the dwarfs worked, Snow's and the Queen's outfits worked, and the forest scenes and village scenes were great. So visually, it was all over the place for me. 

Characters play a huge role in world-building and although, as I said above, some aspects of the characterization did work other aspects just feel apart. First of all, the accents really got on my nerves. I'm not British, but I just could not stand the fake British accents. Especially since some characters coughqueencough couldn't decide if they had a British accent or an American one and just kept going back and forth. Advice to movie makers: just let the actors keep their own accents, it's much less jarring than going back and forth. 

I also really detested the assistant/butler guy who was supposed to be in there for comic relief. Which brings me to the humor in the film...

The humor or, most often in this film, attempted humor became annoying. It becomes much more difficult to immerse oneself in a different fantasy world if we're constantly being hit with lines that are supposed to be funny to a modern (usually American teen) audience. 

All of these little things that take away from the world-building for me put this movie in a genre that's common out there. Things like Stardust, for example, are like this movie in that they are clearly aimed at a very specific audience and they don't seem to attempt to build believable worlds. You're not supposed to take it seriously. I'm not a fan of this approach, but I can sometimes enjoy a movie like this if I have time to spare and nothing more epic in scale to watch! 

In conclusion, watch it, but don't expect too much. 

And I've just realized that I have yet to review the PoTC movies or How to Train Your Dragon. This must be remedied soon! :D