Snow White and the Huntsman

This week is the second anniversary of this blog. For two years, we have posted at least one column a week. In a rare moment of seriousness, I'm very proud of what we've done here, and want to thank you for reading. Now, enough of that.

This week, Evan and I saw Snow White and the Huntsman. We took Drew along as well. I know it's been out for a while, but last week Prometheus came out, and the week before that we were pretty busy. And by we, I mean Evan. Because I'm not the one that's moving, changing jobs, and getting married all within two months. Although to be perfectly honest, I do have soccer in some evenings. On to more movie-ish things ...

The previews were a little worrying. Previews are generally aimed at the same demographic watching the movie they're set before, so seeing Ice Age: Continental Drift, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2, and Les Misérables was a little disheartening. But they capped it off with Bourne, so that was nice.

The movie itself starts with opening narration over the scenes it's explaining. You should also know this already. if you don't, go read the fairy tales. Or possibly the Disney movie. It's been released about eleventy-billion times. You shouldn't have trouble finding it. King and Queen have a beautiful baby named Snow White. Queen passes away, King remarries after a while to a beautiful woman who turns out to be a witch and murders the king, then takes over. Hope disappears from the world, until Frodo manages to take the ring to Mordor, and - no, wait ...

Anyway, Snow White is locked up until she turns into Kristen Stewart, whereupon she escapes into the dark forest. The evil witch hires a huntsman to lead a team of trackers into the forest, but once Snow White is found, the huntsman decides she's better off alive. He fights off the rest of the team, and he and Snow White go on the lam. They set out to find The Duke, who's the father of one of Snow White's friends from childhood, and whose castle is stupidly unbesieged by the Witch's forces.

Yes, they run into everything in the fairy tale, plus a few more. Also, the movie throws in every cliché it could, almost as if the writers had gone to TVTropes and said "We should include everything in this site." So we have Helmets are Hardly Heroic, Friend to All Living Things, Darker and Edgier, and most especially: Evil isHammy. Good grief, Charlize Theron must have had a ball playing the evil witch. Chews scenery with reckless abandon, hams it up to a laughable extent. A knock on Kristen Stewart was that she didn't act much, but she wasn't asked to do a whole lot, and Theron certainly makes up for any lack of acting (on anyone's behalf).

Aside from the cliché storm, it's actually a decent movie. The effects are spectacular, particularly the aging effects on Theron. The only downside: Who wants to look at an old, wrinkly Charlize Theron? But we do have a young Kristen Stewart to captivate us, so there's that. The music is decent, but I haven't given it enough listens to pass judgement. The humour is there (Chris Hemsworth and the Dwarves bring most of it), so all in all, I think I'll have to say it's a Blu-Ray movie. The big knock against it is the lack of action. But that's only a big knock against it for me, so you may enjoy it more.