Psycho's Movie Reviews #196: Mirror Mirror (2012)

Mirror Mirror is a 2012 American fantasy comedy film based on the fairy tale "Snow White" collected by the Brothers Grimm.

It is directed by Tarsem Singh and produced by Ryan Kavanaugh, Bernie Goldmann, Brett Ratner and Kevin Misher. It was written by Marc Klein and Jason Keller, with music by Alan Menken. It stars Lily Collins, Julia Roberts, Armie Hammer, Nathan Lane, Mare Winningham, Michael Lerner, and Sean Bean. It was released theatrically by Relativity Media on March 30, 2012.

The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design and earned $183 million on an $85-100 million budget but received generally mixed reviews from critics. Mirror Mirror was released on DVD and Blu-ray by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on June 26, 2012.

Plot

A widowed king marries an evil witch named Clementianna, the most beautiful woman in the land. One day, the king leaves to fight a great evil that has invaded the land, but never returns; Clementianna rules in his absence, while confining her young stepdaughter, Snow White, to the palace.

10 years later, Snow White desires to explore the kingdom and sneaks out. Walking through the forest, she meets the visiting Prince Andrew Alcott, a prince from the Kingdom of Valencia, who has been robbed by a band of Dwarves; she and the prince become smitten with each other. Snow White arrives in the town, and finds the people are destitute due to the Queen's heavy taxation.

Meanwhile, Clementianna is introduced to Alcott and plans to marry him for his wealth. Clementianna throws a ball to woo the Prince, and Snow White secretly attends, planning to ask the prince to help her restore the kingdom. The Queen notices them dancing and orders her manservant Brighton to take the princess into the forest and feed her to the Beast. Brighton leaves Snow White in the forest, and she flees the Beast, collapsing at the door to the Dwarves' hideout; the dwarves take her in and introduce themselves as Grimm, Butcher, Wolf, Napoleon, Half Pint, Grub, and Chuck. When Brighton collects more taxes levied by the Queen to pay for her expensive parties, the Dwarves rob him. Snow White takes the money and returns it to the townspeople, crediting the Dwarves, whom the people hail as heroes.

Clementianna informs Alcott that Snow White is dead. When the Prince finds out that the bandits have robbed Brighton, he goes after them. In the forest, Alcott discovers that Snow White is alive and in league with the Dwarves, who have trained her in combat. Each believing the other to be in the wrong, Snow White and Alcott duel. Alcott returns to the Palace defeated and informs the Queen that Snow White is alive.

Clementianna enters her Mirror House, within which lives her reflection, the Mirror Queen. Clementianna has the Mirror Queen temporarily turn Brighton into a cockroach, and requests a love potion so she can make the prince fall in love with her. The potion turns out to be a 'puppy love' potion and the prince becomes devoted to her like a puppy dog. Under this spell, the prince agrees to marry her. Using dark magic, the Queen attacks Snow White and the Dwarves with two giant marionettes; but Snow White defeats them by finding and cutting their strings.

On the day of her wedding, Clementianna arrives to find that Snow White and the Dwarves have robbed the party and abducted the Prince; for her inability to handle bandits and for lying about Snow White's death, the aristocrats demand the Queen be deposed. Back in the forest, Snow White manages to break the spell on Alcott with a kiss.

Snow White encounters Clementianna, who sends the Beast after her. Prince Alcott tries to save Snow White, but the Beast captures her. However, the Beast hesitates in killing her and Snow White sees that it wears a necklace with a moon charm on it similar to the one the Queen wears. Snow White cuts the necklace off, breaking Clementianna’s spell, and restoring the Beast to its true form: Snow White’s father. Clementianna begins to age rapidly; the Mirror Queen explains this is the price for using dark magic.

Grateful to Alcott for his assistance, the king agrees to let him marry Snow White. At the wedding, a hooded crone appears and offers Snow White an apple as a wedding gift. At first, Snow White accepts the apple; but, as she is about to bite it, she realizes that the crone is Clementianna. Snow White cuts a piece from the apple and gives it to Clementianna, who reluctantly accepts it. The Mirror House shatters declaring it Snow White's story after all. Snow White and the Dwarves live happily ever after.

Production

Filming for Mirror Mirror began on June 20, 2011, in Montreal, Quebec, under the working title Untitled Snow White Project. Production on the film wrapped in mid-September. The film was officially titled Mirror Mirror on November 4, 2011. The first trailer was released on November 30, 2011, in partnership with Relativity Media and Trailer Park. The teaser poster was released the same day. Mirror Mirror was the last film which Tarsem's regular costume designer, Eiko Ishioka, worked on before her death. The visual effects were designed by Tom Wood and executed by Wayne Brinton, Tim Carras, Sébastien Moreau and Amanda Dyar. Relativity Media announced the movie's final cost as being $85 million, though an article in the Los Angeles Times said the true budget was closer to $100 million.

Casting

Roberts was the first to be cast, because very early on Tarsem Singh wanted an Evil Queen with whom audiences could relate. He stated that in the film, the queen is not evil, but rather insecure. He also suggested that the Queen's true ugliness may be revealed at the very end of the film. Originally Saoirse Ronan was considered for the role of Snow White but the age difference between her and Armie Hammer was too large (he was 25 and she was 17). Felicity Jones was offered the part but turned it down. Collins was eventually cast in the role. Collins said in an interview that her casting happened in 24 hours after she met Tarsem Singh and read for him. Hammer was cast as the prince who is at first drawn towards the Queen and then towards Snow White. He beat out James McAvoy and Alex Pettyfer for the role.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The film was released in theatres on March 30, 2012.

The film received generally mixed reviews. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 50% with an average score of 5.64/10 based on reviews from 197 critics. The site's general consensus is that "Like most of Tarsem Singh's films, Mirror Mirror is undeniably beautiful – but its treatment of the age-old Snow White fable lacks enough depth or originality to set it apart from the countless other adaptations of the tale." On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 reviews from film critics, it has an average score of 46 from the 34 reviews, which indicates "Mixed or average reviews".

Robbie Collin from British newspaper The Telegraph gave the film four stars describing it as "an exuberantly charming fairy story that owes as much to the gnarled folk tale illustrations of Arthur Rackham as the stagey, saturated lunacy of that half-loved, half-feared East German fantasy The Singing Ringing Tree. It's a Grimm piece of work, but far from a grim one: without rehashing the seminal Disney animated version, it radiates gorgeousness and good humour with a near-nuclear intensity." Collin praised costume designer Eiko Ishioka's work, saying "every outfit in Mirror Mirror is a masterpiece". He concluded the film is "the opposite of Tim Burton's brash, chaotic, dispiritingly popular Alice in Wonderland: here, the artistry of the cast and crew leaps off the screen, not 3D computer graphics."

On its opening day, Mirror Mirror made $5.8 million, coming in at the No. 3 spot behind The Hunger Games and Wrath of the Titans. For its opening weekend, the film earned $18.1 million while holding onto the No. 3 spot at the box office. During its theatrical run, Mirror Mirror grossed $64.9 million in North America and $118.1 million internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $183 million.

Budget $85-100 million

Box office $183 million

My Review

I can only think of one other movie where Julia Roberts is cast in a negative role. When news broke out that Roberts will play the evil queen in this Grimm's fairy tale adaptation, I just couldn't resist. Let's face it, it's not everyday you get to see the most popular actress in the world (with the best smile in Hollywood) play an evil and conniving character. In this version, the story remains true to original, if not with a wacky twist and a lot of humour.

After the king disappears under mysterious circumstances, Snow White (Lily Collins) learns that her step-mother the queen (Roberts) has been plundering and looting from the people of the land. After rescuing a prince (Armie Hammer)from seven 'little' highway bandits, and gaining his affection, Snow White is banished to the forest when the queen sees wealth and power in the guise of the unwitting prince; besides his use as her toy-boy. Snow White must now team up with the aforementioned bandits and win back her birth right, her prince, and restore her father's kingdom to its former glory. Thus begins an itchy cat-fight with a capital B.

Having just watched this movie, I can't say that this is the best adaptation thus far, given its PG classification. However, considering that there are two other versions slated for a 2012 release, including a darker version starring the emotionless Kristen Stewart, I am forced to say that "Mirror Mirror" suffices as a decent family adventure-comedy. Having cut a niche for himself in visual aesthetics and art design, director Tarsem Singh creates a vivid and colourful world with innovative sets and costumes – a standard that is rapidly becoming his cinematic insignia after his work from "The Cell" to last year's "Immortals". Singh also scores with intended comic relief, given that he has had to work with a story where the audience knows what to expect. When you consider the story's comic backbone complete with slapstick moments, Roberts's sarcastic one-liners arising from a witty script and the ever amusing Nathan Lane as the queen's royal subject, this movie becomes a light-hearted stab at one of the oldest and most adapted fairy tales. That said, this version sits well with the intended audience in its narration, if you go in expecting a simple and entertaining movie.

I really can't say that I was captivated by the acting. Collins as Snow White and Hammer as the prince are just so-so as protagonists of an age old tale. Given the age of 'girl power', it is no surprise that Snow White here is a spirited young girl that not even for a moment, appears to be a damsel in distress. On the other hand, the prince is comical in almost all scenes, stripping (pun unintended) his character of any chivalry from the original tale. As the movie is narrated in the queen's perspective, it becomes apparent that the story is less about Snow White and more about the queen and her vanity. This chain of thought is what gives "Mirror Mirror" a new spin to the old yarn. Personally, I strongly feel that Julia Roberts steals the show – not because I expected her to – but simply because the story appears to have been scripted with a lot of focus on her character. It's almost as if this version was written by the evil queen herself.

For the most part, Singh's work here is a tad bit above average in re-telling a grand old tale. He keeps it simple while giving it a fresh and anti-Disney twist. Then he goes and ruins it with a totally unnecessary and bizarre ending. Did Singh copy this off Tommy O'Haver's "Ella Enchanted" or did he want to give the finale a Bollywood twist? If Singh has used this movie to say something about his roots, then he has picked the wrong movie to do so. Mixing Hollywood and Bollywood themes within the same movie is always risky. Danny Boyle may have gotten away with it in "Slumdog Millionaire" because of its theme on poverty and the hugely popular underdog factor. All said and done, if it were not for Snow White doing the "Bhangra", I would have easily rated this film as a good start to 2012. Even so, if you are willing to overcome your disbelief in the end, the greater part of this movie is not half as bad.

The film at times, satirizes the fairy tale. Julia Roberts as the wicked Queen step-mom narrates in the beginning. Lilly Collins as Snow White was made to look like Jennifer Connolly in "Labyrinth." The humour is simple and basic enough for everyone to enjoy. There are some minor hidden political commentary for us adults. Such as when Julia instructs Brighton (Nathan Lane) to use his imagination and tell the people "bread is meat" (ketchup is a vegetable). But the film doesn't get bogged down trying to be political, it is just a fun film about aging women desperately attempting to hold on to their youth while competing with their daughter for suitors. (I didn't mention Kardashian.)

The background is CG which gives the film a fairy tale look. The dwarfs are quirky and more akin to the ones we knew in "Time Bandits" than the bumbling group Disney gave us. They made good use of the sound track, one that could have been used in any film from 1935 to 1970...until the end when they did some ridiculous lip-sync song, directed at the young princesses in the audience. You could tell Julia Roberts had fun making this production.

The film is basically kid safe, some violence and "horror". Enjoyable for an adult. This is the film you volunteer to take the kids to go see. 8.6/10

{Considering Lily Collins is the daughter of Phil Collins, her voice isn't too bad. Especially this song, it's a bop}