'Mirror Mirror' film review

Snow White is lost. The naïve and easily scared character from Disney's 1937 production is gone! Don't get me wrong, Snow (Lily Collins) starts out that way but quickly transforms into a ninja warrior Xena-like princess that leaves the original innocent character behind and buried in the woods.

Her story starts, ironically, in a Cinderella fashion. The Evil Queen (Julia Roberts) forbids Snow to step outside her room and/or castle grounds. But she goes out anyway like any given teenager nowadays. Only there is no help from mice this time which is another thing that fell out of the basket. There are no helping animals at all in this movie.

Another reason why she's gone? The movie is not about her. It's about the Evil Queen, whom you just can't hate. I found myself rooting for her all the way in spite of the fact that she's a broke widow looking for money by marrying the rich prince, who is much younger than she and is, of course, Snow's love interest alike.

What else got lost? The iconic poisoned apple barely made it to the script. During its tiny scene, the forbidden fruit's importance is shadowed by Roberts's talent and the attempted moral-of-the-story line, "It's good to know when you've been beaten."

With Indian music video and film director Tarsem Singh at the helm, the film ends with a Bollywoodish music video that feels so out of place I had to wait for the very last credit to see if there was any relevant hint somewhere. There wasn't.

All in all, the film looks beautiful. All the colors, sets, gowns and makeup are simply gorgeous. There were a few funny scenes and some that were meant to be funny that weren't, but I allowed them to entertain me all the same.