Mirror Mirror
My vote for the worst movie of the year, Tarsem Singh’s re-imagined re-telling of Snow White is a mess of ideas, tone, and terrible acting. A bad kid’s film dressed up as an adult-ish lark ala "The Princess Bride," "Mirror, Mirror" is so numbingly bad, it would be better to just pretend it doesn’t exist. Julia Roberts stars as the Evil Queen who is about as bad-ass as a spatula. On full display is her trade-mark laugh that seems to be injected into the film for no other reason that it will remind people that she used to once be charming. Lily Collins is fine as Snow, but her character is so paper-thin and her eyebrows are so daunting they need a screen-credit all their own. And don’t get me started on her random Bollywood number during the end-credits.
As is normal for a Singh film (he did "Immortals," "The Cell," and "The Fall"), the film looks pretty but in all honesty, it all looks grossly fake. Every set looks as if you’re on a Disney ride where there is the illusion that you are in another world until you look up and notice the ceiling. You can practically see the seams of the set. Every piece of furniture and every costume (by Eiko Ishioka) looks brand new and not lived in at all. Not to mention, as clean as everything looks, this "kingdom" feels incredibly small.
Add to that annoying dwarves, a stupid prince (Armie Hammer) and a fey right-hand man to the Queen (Nathan Lane) - all of which don’t work. But most of all, Roberts is a head-scratcher. Why she was attracted to this project, I’m not sure. Whereas Theron got to really rip into her role as the same character in this summer’s "Snow White and the Huntsman," Roberts hams it up in a performance that is non-sensical. This isn’t just a skip it - it’s a run far far away from it.
Special Features just add to the misery: Deleted Scenes, featurette "Looking Through the Mirror," "I Believe I Can Dance" - a painful step-by-step dance routine that "mirrors" the final number (although it doesn’t at all) , "Mirror, Mirror" Storybook for kids to repeat the story but in a more cumbersome way, "Prince and the Puppies" where puppies give their opinions on Hammer’s performance, and the Theatrical Trailer.
MIRROR, MIRROR
BD $39.99
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