Hey, the folks, Robot and I just walk into the door of our home coming from the movie theater where we just saw the much anticipated, much talked about, and much maligned Snow White, and we got.
A doozy of a review. Welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Rose.
We wanted to get in front of the microphones while this was still fresh on our minds. Right now is still fresh to the point we might still be full of some emotions.
Yes, we literally saw the movie. I think we walked out of the theater twenty minutes ago, and actually, right in front of us right now is the original. It's it nineteen thirty seven version, and it is interesting to see now one right after the other. How some things were actually true to form a most shot for shot. Yeah, there were definitely moments where you're like, oh wow, that
was actually exactly what they recreated. However, there were quite a few deviations from the original which we anticipated, which we had heard about so.
Which can be okay.
Well, but modernizing a tale is admirable. But it's tricky, and I think that movie we just saw proved just how tricky it can be.
I want to get into some details, obviously, we're going to hear, but your first your initial feeling or impression of the movie. Not a full review, but just what would you your first impression? After all we heard about what it was going to be and then finally see it, what would you say? You in pressure was?
I hate to say this. I was disappointed.
You're disappointed?
Yeah, I had lowered expectations even but you know, I love I love animated film. I love a film that has singing in it. I love it. It doesn't bother me at all when people break out into song and you.
Like fantasy and romance.
Yes, I'm age like you know, Tangled is my care And they did try to. And I saw elements of Tangled in here, but without the wit, without the humor, without the snarkiness. And that's what this was missing. It tried so hard to have heart, it tried so hard to have purpose, it tried so hard to bewoke that it missed so much of what I love a lot of times about some of these Disney movies, even when they have the female heroin. And yes they're pushing female empowerment,
which I love, but not too much of. You got to do it with some humility. You got to do it with some humor. You got to do it with some laughs, and that's what this was missing. So it came off well flat and honestly disappointing. I was just disappointed.
I don't remember a single part in the movie where I laughed.
I was laughing at it, not with it.
Don't think of a line. I mean, Dopey did some funny stuff, but just as far as the dialogue goes, it wasn't there. My first impression coming out.
Of it was.
That those terrible reviews didn't come from nowhere exactly. I was so prepared to like this movie and give it more of a chance because like, people are just upset and because of the controversy, and they're not giving it a fair chance. And I walked down and say, oh, that the complaints are legit about the movie. And we did.
We desperately wanted to like this movie.
Yeah, we even said on the morning run today, we looked and saw that the Rotten Tomato score was like forty four percent, but that the audience score was seventy something percent. Yeah, seventy seven. So I thought, you know what, I have absolutely cited more often with the audience score than the critics score. So I went in with I was hopeful but reserved, and then I thought, ooh, I get I get why people have not regarded this film the way maybe even they had helped do. I think everyone.
Maybe I'm presuming here, but I think most of us of a certain age loved this film, appreciate the fact that it wanted to be modernized, could forget the noise, forget the controversy. I can put that aside. This is our these are actors. I can take what happened backstage or off stage. I can put that aside when I'm actually watching the film. And I think a lot of us went into that thinking okay, and I'm still hopeful that I'm gonna like it anyway, that it's gonna be
sweet and I'm gonna get it. And I just was disappointed.
So folks who already had an inclination to not like the movie, the movie didn't do anything to win them over right at all. And in fact, people who were inclined to maybe hate on the movie, you do see it and then go aha, you give them that look. We were looking for ways, and we, to be quite honest, we second guests doing the episode because we were digging trying to find things to say to be complimentary, and there's plenty to compliment obviously from the look, from the
singing from the talent. Yes, that's throughout again, it's Disney, the Disney movie. You know it's gonna look a certain way, but it didn't feel a certain way. It didn't feel like Disney magic that were used to having, at least to me, because even the open when they do the whole animated thing, just the open of any movie when it's mom.
Doom doom, doom, doom, doom.
Dude.
Yeah, the fireworks and you see the castle.
Yes, you just kind of you just kind of get emotional, like, ah, right, here we go, Disney about to take us on this ride.
That was the most magical moment in the theater today? Was that open?
Something you said to me we were talking about it when we first came out, and you said, it wasn't magical. It didn't feel magical, and that is what we have come to expect from Disney films. And we kind of landed on this look snow white as inappropriate now as it may seem. In nineteen thirty seven was a fairy tale, and so a lot of us grew up watching this
fairy tale. It was fantasy, it wasn't reality. And I think when sometimes we try, with the best of intentions to make things more realistic or more modern, we lose the fan to see, we lose the fairy tale. So in the retelling, it's got to be so hard to thread that needle to still have it be aspirational and yet modern. And I just I've said this before and
they did. Let me just say, I was actually a little surprised they did have the prince who ended up being more of a vagabond turned you know, love intes you're going to get into Jonathan p He wasn't really a Prince Charming, but his kiss did save snow White, which I actually thought they were gonna not do, so that actually surprised me a little bit. But so they kept that part of it. But I do think that when you when you try so hard to be realistic,
is it wrong to dream of prince Charming? I think it's like you go too far in one direction where somehow it's not okay to be the girl who dreams of marrying prince.
So is that so stick with that?
It?
Should we not have fantasy or fairy tale. Should we not have anyone or put out any image, any media, any movie that essentially presents a woman, a young woman in a position that she's waiting on prince charming or someone who comes save her, a damsel in distress? Can we not do that? Because I said the magic was gone. But a part of this movie is the fantasy that this will never happen. Some dude on a white horse is not gonna be riding through some sing a song.
It's just fantasy. Can we not have it?
But I just think it's okay to have that and have other stories that tell other types of fantasies and other types of aspirations. And I think it's okay to still have these nostalgic fairy tales where yeah, the girl dreams of her prince. And it's okay because I think we have enough other modern stories that I don't think little girls today are confused at their ability to tell
their own stories. And I think it's still okay. There are still plenty of young women and girls out there who say, yeah, you know what I want to be. I want to be a wife and I want to be a mom. And that's a really important, big role, and we I don't need to have all the other stuff forced down my throat that I have to be a lawyer, I have to be a doctor, I have
to do everything. Like I think it's great to have all these different types of stories and we don't have to erase the story of the girl wanting to end up with the man.
So they did.
They did in this retelling, and that's what they call it, right retelling. There was not a moment even when her life was threatened, when she had nothing to defend herself on her and a grown man had a knife to her chest, she didn't back down. She didn't coward in the least bit. They showed strength from her throughout.
I guess I was.
I mean, we were just watching and again we have it on in the background, but that same scene, this snow white arms up, coward trying to defend herself and backed off.
Yeah, that's what probably, That's what I would do. So it's like, you know it, Sometimes I feel like it's trying too hard to say, yes, women are strong, Yes girls can fight back, and I get that, but I also feel like sometimes you can try too hard and it feels false. It feels pushed, and it almost undoes what you're trying, the message you're trying to send. It almost makes it feel like a false message. So I cringed a little bit at that. We don't need to
push so hard that all girls and all these she's fearless. Now, it's okay to be afraid. It's okay to it's okay to want the guy. I just like it's okay, Like I don't think it all has to be one or the other. And strength means that you're unafraid, and that strength means you don't want the guy. Strength means you can do it on your own. I think they all can be true. So it's a little That's where I
got a little annoyed. Even as a woman and as a mom of two daughters, I'm all about female empowerment, but we don't need to go so far that it becomes unrealistic or somehow it's negative to to be afraid or to want the guy. That's where I have a problem.
A lot of it felt like lip service. It didn't feel genuine.
It didn't feel like there was an authentic story necessarily or a authentic emotion that was coming out of anybody. It was just a ligne here or line there, kind of like we were checking boxes of what's supposed to do. Says yes, that is sohow so much of the movie felt like we were checking boxes.
And you just nailed it. Here was another thing that you pointed out. There's so many things to get to, but this was one where they made a point at the end to act as though mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? That it really was about inner beauty and not outward beauty. And Okay, I understand, I get it, but you're also taking away the whole point of the film, which was that the evil stepmother, the Evil Queen was jealous of snow White's physical beauty.
So I just that was also to me a little too forced and a wishing of oh no, the beauty is from within, and that just was not true to the original story and just didn't make sense with what we saw in the story about gal Gado's character being physically jealous of snow White's physical beauty.
You know, this one way to put it as well, some of the things we've gone through here, But there were too many times you me Sabine I'm sitting in between you two. There was too many times where I look over at you, look over at her. We're looking. We rolled our eyes yes, when a line was said or a moment happened, like seriously, I just come on and look, it's difficult to This is how it read to us. There are people out there who loved it and loved the new message and love the update.
I don't know if it's because we.
Are a little older, a little old school and grew up, and maybe that's the case and this one. There are plenty of people out there who are gonna love this movie. It just it felt this way to us coming out of there. And it started off the jump. I talked about the open, just the Disney open, But when the movie started, the first scene was essentially an explanation of the name, and that was when the first rolling of
the eyes took place. You got to explain why you don't have a white girl playing snow.
White whose skin is white as snow. So they made this whole big scene about a snowstorm and how the baby was born in the snowstorm and that's why her name was snow White. So they're already trying to explain.
In a.
I don't know and a woke away. You know, we don't just have a white girl whose skin is white as snow. It just already felt forced from the beginning. So yes, that was the first eye roll.
That's how it felt forced. And it almost seemed like a throwaway because it wasn't a long scene, I mean no minutes.
Yes. And the other thing I thought was interesting, well, we haven't even discussed or addressed the CGI dwarves, so a lot was made of this. And Peter Dinklice, who we've I love, who was brilliant, you know, certainly spoke about how, oh you're going to modernize snow White, You're going to make her empowered, Yet you're going to leave these dwarves, you know, as these cavemen who can't help themselves and need a woman to come in and fix
their lives for them. In addition to the fact that you're not casting actual dwarfs who would love to be employed and probably play a role of a lifetime that was made for them, that was literally written for them. As I was watching the movie, two things stood out to me. First of all, I think it was highly offensive that they were the only human CGI. The other CGIs were the birds and the squirrels and the forest animals, and so that is just innately offensive in and of itself,
I would imagine. And then I just felt like the acting suffered because it just felt like I was watching Rachel Zegler talk to a siege like to nothing. You didn't feel a connection. As much as we loved the Dopey character who was CGI, it the connection wasn't able to be what it could have been had there actually been actors.
Is it fair to say that so much of the charm and warmth and fun of this movie the original was in the seven Dwarfs?
Absolutely right, Yes, this.
Their little personalities and all that came through in that one.
It didn't come through in this one. For whatever reason, it just didn't.
Was because there weren't humans emoting.
That grumpy I just they didn't stand out. Now, Dopey is a big deal for a lot of reasons. In the movie, he just happened to be a he was then did he play that central of a role in the original He was.
The young you know, is he the young the younger dwarf who had like the oversized clothes. Yes, but he didn't.
Speak, didn't speak well. Dopey has a voice that.
Was that was probably the highlight of the movie for all of us. We agreed. When we walked out of the theater, Dopey.
The Cgidope looked like what a nine year old boy maybe possibly living with all these grown men.
It was.
It was odd, but he had a particular look to him.
He has one dancing scene.
It's hilarious.
That's hilarious.
Okay, we did laugh. That was a joyful moment watching the movie. We all enjoyed it. We weren't laughing at it or we were actually laughing with it. It felt fun and it was all Dope. He stole the.
Scene, but he had a central He became very much a central character in a I guess All this really pulls down to is know why trying to take back over the kingdom. Yes, and so there's almost she leads a band of I guess woods.
Misfits yes.
To do it and you no, not.
A weapon in hand?
No? And look, that general theme holds another point that Gal Gadot, you know, it's fun. With all of the controversies about this film coming into the film, none of that was what I was even thinking about. It had zero impact on me watching the film. There were so many other things that were I was focused on that. It's funny that all the noise we heard about that maybe prevented people from going to the theater, That like wasn't even a part of the equation in terms of how
we felt about the film. But you know, she didn't. She wasn't scary. You know, you almost wanted her. She needed to be more frightening, more menacing, more It was I don't know, it just was flat for me. And so that was also another part that was really missing, as there was no fear there. So we have a fearless heroine who stands up to anything in anyone, even with a dagger in, you know, right up to her neck, and then you've got a villain who isn't terrifying. So
it like who am I? Who am I rooting for? Who am I scared for? I didn't feel anything deeply because I don't think that either one of the heroines played or the heroine or the villain played them the way they were originally played because they wanted to make them different.
Right, That's okay, Right, that's okay.
It just left it left It left me, you know what someone said, Hi ho hum, and I when I saw that as one of the reviews, that kind of is what you're left with when you don't when you aren't willing to take a stand on either way, you're trying to play it safe. Basically from a retelling perspective, you end up either offending everybody or affecting no one. And I feel like it kind of did both.
Oh, they took a shot.
I hate to deal with that word woke so much and wokeness and what anybody was going for on this movie. Look, I'm okay with them taking the liberties, and they have to be okay with folks like you and me not really saying it's our thing, right, And that's okay.
I think it was.
I loved her outfit, that yellow skirt. I thought that was beautiful throughout she there is a zero question about her singing talent.
She's phenomenal.
Virgil Zeggler, who else gave us a good performance the Jonathan Okay, let's let's deal with it. Oh, yes, right, yes, we just watched. In the original, she meets the guy because he rolls up on a white horse. Yes, yes, finds her in the wood.
Prince Charming, literally Prince Charming.
How does she find this guy? How'd they meet?
Wait? He was stealing Oh yes, right, he was stealing potatoes from the castle, and so, yes he was. That's very much like Tangled. He's he's the thief for the you know, just kind of a petty thief who's wanted by the law. That's where I saw a little Tangled, ESK. What they missed is they didn't have the snark and the wit that you got with Tangled. This was just kind of a yeah, I'm stealing potatoes and that was it, and she was, you know, trying to fend for him.
It's just h meh. I didn't I didn't feel the chemistry. Also, I didn't feel chemistry between that was my word. Next, I did not feel it between any of the characters. So, you know, I'm glad we saw it because I think just with so much being written about it, so much being said about it, and so much controversy in the beginning, like before we even knew anything about it, that actually had zero impact on how I feel about the actual movie.
What people were concerned about in terms of what Rachel Zeckler said about Trump supporters, or what Gal Gadote said about Israel, or about any of the other issues, even the modernizing of the tale. I was interested to see what it would look like. So none of that actually factored into what my ultimate feeling was about the movie when.
I watched it, not in the least bit.
And for folks that don't know, if you've seen the headlines, the movie did make forty three million dollars the box office opening weekend.
That's a problem.
It's a problem because it cost two hundred and fifty million dollars to make, and that's before any advertising costs. It needs to have a good long theat run. The problem now is going to be Other Disney films have come out thirty five forty plus million dollars, but they had legs because of a good word of mouth.
Word of mouth.
This I don't know if people are going to run out and tell other folks you got to see this movie or go check it out.
There was curiosity and ours was curiosity. Yes, I don't know.
It doesn't have competition in the box office for the next couple weeks. Also, that's good, but are you gonna I don't know if it's had legs.
I don't think that. I think that if you've got kids and who want to go see this movie, they will love it. It will be a hit with them. And I think that there will always be those families who will be looking for something fun and sweet and family friendly for their kids to see. But is this a word of mouth movie where adult to adult, because there are you know, they have hit some out of the ballpark where we're like, wow, my kids loved it.
But I kind of even liked it more because of all the funny lines and just the clever dialogue that just reels in the adult so that that was not here for me in this movie, and that's what's missing.
I think we want it so badly to like this movie. But we shall see, shall see what happens in the coming weeks. But it got an uphill climb. It's hard now after seeing it to go while it's too bad about the controversies, it's hard now to go, Oh, it's too bad that that actors said that it's too bad that people are now and I'm saying it's too bad that that product probably is not going to get people running to the theater.
Yeah, it's not about the controversies anymore.
That's true, but I still think it's worth it. It's an interesting social conversation within even your own family or friend group to watch the original and then to watch what's just been released. And maybe the value could be that it sparks the conversation about what's appropriate, what's not, how we address communities, how we address us, female empowerment, all
of that. If it leads to interesting conversations and minds that open just a little bit, and even perhaps people saying we could have done that better, it's not a bad thing.
Yeah, and we'll all learn something from maybe next time and some remake, we'll learn to do this. So don't go too far this way. Or maybe it's okay if that person is white, or maybe it's okay if that character stays black, it's okay.
I think that's all right.
And again I would just want to give them because Gal Gadot does one. I've never met Rachel Zeckler, but I mean, these are folks we're fans of, and we hate that their product is Wait, we don't want to align it anymore.
It's already been maligning. We give our.
Impressions here, but just the work the beauty of it. It looks like Disney, it just didn't feel like Disney.
That's true. It's a good way to put it. Well, we want to thank you for listening to this episode of Amy and tj. I hope you have a wonderful day everyone, and we'll see you next time.
The Tations, the att