Mirror Mirror

Saw Mirror Mirror, a fancifully costumed version of the Snow White story. It's a very confusing film. The costumes are absolutely amazing, as is anything created by Eiko Ishioka and the sets are also grand and spectacular. The magic mirror, in this version, is a portal to some Nordic hut which resembles a raven in flight. At one point the evil queen uses giant, magical puppets to attack our heroes. The puppets are animated slithering like snakes and scampering like spiders. It's a creepy scene, but only with the sound off because for some stupid fucking reason the puppets are constantly jabbering away through this battle in herp-a-derp voices, shouting "Wuh-oh" and "I seeee you!"

And therein lies the fundamental problem with this film. It really feels like someone strong-armed the film into being a kid-friendly comedy half-way through production. Initially I did like the snarking of the evil queen and hoped for something interesting when she quipped that this was "her story." The director, Tarsem Singh, did produce The Fall which is a much better film and which contains some interesting thoughts on who exactly owns a story. Alas this film contains no such thoughts. There's hints and whispers of it though. At one point snow White goes off to nobly save the prince, proclaiming that she won't be like those other fairy-tale princesses. How progressive. In another scene, she sword fights with the prince who keeps laughingly disarming her and slapping her ass. I wonder if that played well for the test audiences so clearly sneered at in the other scene.

I feel like this film would have been a lot better if it had taken itself a little more seriously and had not forced some incongruous comedy into the story. Note the final scenes in particular, where the evil queen dies. Everyone on screen is aghast and confused by the magical death of the queen, but the soundtrack is filled with cheering noises, coming seemingly from nowhere. The cheering then abruptly stops, as though someone had thrown a switch, before the big-finish, Bollywood-style, dance ending. Why the clearly fake cheering? Was it just incompetence? Or some kind of post-modern statement? Handled properly, it might have been pretty cool (on a stylistic level at least) but instead comes off as slap-dash and confusing.

I think this film is trying really hard to be stylish and look cool, but it's very hard to be cool and stylish and also be a clown. I wish it had stuck to self-important style. It risks becoming campy, but camp is better than lame jokes and mugging. It attempted to bulk itself up with buffoonery and just winds up looking stupid. Every joke is painful, every plot twist is telegraphed, and every gorgeous dress and elegant suit is undercut by the characters remarking that they sure look stupid in this getup. A film totally destroyed by compromise.

Edit: this came out at the same time as Snow White and the Huntsman. In the grand tradition of Hollywood, this is probably the far-inferior film from another studio trying to imitate the subject but not the substance of an actually decent film.