'Snow White and the Huntsman' is Not Your Bedtime Story

First of all, I would like to inform everyone that I am well aware that I have not been active in posting on this blog in the past week or two. School has been the busiest thing for me, let alone it as a superior priority. It is apparent to many however, that films still take a spacious partition of my life. In relation to this, I hold thoughts of making it up by expanding this blog-a-zine, as I would like to call it now, featuring more posts other than reviews. FilmPolice 2.0 will offer a wide array of posts varying from movie news, rumors, trailers and of course movie musings.

In our first take as expanded version, I will try to chase the movie screen times beginning in what I began to miss posting, 'Snow White and the Huntsman'.

As if fairy tale adaptations adhere to a pattern, they appear just like a couple of misfire after another. A start is an interminably tiresome 'Beastly' (adapted from the crowd favorite Disney tale, 'Beauty and the Beast') in which Alex Pettyffer plays a cursed rude teenager by a mystique young woman. In this tripe, the most entertaining was when Neil Patrick Harris (Barney Stinson in the TV sitcom 'How I Met Your Mother') came in to the scene. Once the teen-centered formula failed to attract critical success, they have turned to go for a darker adaptation. Then came 'Red Riding Hood': an Amanda Seyfried movie about 'Little Red Riding Hood' only this time, the big bad wolf threatens the whole village instead of abducting granny in her house. It worked only a tad; so filmmakers found time to build a better formula. 'Mirror Mirror' then arouses. A satiric and motley take on the Grimm fairytale 'Snow White'. It is magnificently attractive but the narrative is ultimately sacrificed. Fortunately, finally, a more serious take already took over.

'Snow White and the Huntsman' is the type of fairy tale that you don't want to hear before sleep. It was fashionably dark, profoundly emotional and adventurously pulpy.

King Magnus (Noah Huntley, '28 Days Later') and his Queen (Liberty Ross) always had a pristine kingdom. Ceaselessly happy are the kingdom's reigned couple, however, one missing piece will complete the puzzle; their happy lives. Her skin will be white as snow and her lips will be red as rose. The Queen once imagined what her daughter would look like--the one missing piece. The kingdom celebrated with the couple as the Queen gave birth to their child, Snow White (Kristen Stewart). Unfortunately, it is apparent that fate does not deposit such delight without eventually withdrawing. In all the time of Snow White's existence, a part of her childhood was the harshest. Her mother, the Queen, died 'cause of a disease. King Magnus and Snow White were left destructed. Incomplete. They were orphaned of a wife, a mother.

Soon in a travel to the woods, King Magnus meets an undeniably beautiful young woman abducted by a troop of unknown people. In this, he rescues Ravenna (Charlize Theron, 'Hancock'), the young woman who was abducted, and instantly, he fell in love. The two married and right after, the fate of everyone else turned grey. Ravenna turned out to be someone who knows dark magic: she can absorb the life of young women to maintain her young physicality. With Ravenna's wicked oppression among the villagers and King Magnus himself, the poor Snow White was locked down in a tower for years. Eventually, Ravenna's mirror revealed that she is not the fairest of all; not anymore. Now, Snow White is. She hires a huntsman (Chris Hemsworth, 'The Avengers') to take down Snow White so she can acquire immortality once and for all. The huntsman as might perplexed about the motive of the Wicked Queen, chooses to help Snow White stop Ravenna's evil doings.

I must say that I have pointed excessive hate towards Twilight darling, Kristen Stewart. With 'Snow White and the Huntsman', she has proven me that she really knows how to act. In my own critical observation, what happens with Stewart's case is that her image itself does not spark unlike the vampire dudes in Twilight. There was nothing special about her physically that glues the audiences to her. She's like the high school loner who sits next to the goth one who by the way doesn't want to try to talk to her. Yeah, she measures like that.

Chris Hemsworth as usual offered a serviceable acting but the real stars are the Wicked Queen and the seven, in this movie, eight dwarves. I admittedly think that Charlize Theron playing Ravenna the wicked queen is extremely startling. Humor is not a prerequisite to be frightening, as Charlize has proven in her character. Ravenna is pure evil. Ian McShane and the rest of the dwarves own me from the moment of their appearance to finish.

Visually stunning and startlingly dark, the film begins with a promise. I was left alarmed then because many times have a movie began with a promise and then ended up going nowhere. My intuition was partly correct because right at the third part of the movie, everything was left paperweight and have itself flying all over the place. It transformed from a concrete brick wall to a volume of shallow water. The pacing became uneven, the narrative became less striking and the acting became inconsistent.

While still considering the latter information, 'Huntsman' still is by far the best fairy tale adaptation in the recent memory--an enormous slap in Mirror Mirror's face.