Snow White And The Huntsman was looking like the GOOD Snow White film as the trailers for both that and Mirror Mirror did the rounds, with a gritty, Ridley Scott-historical epic style in place of the gothic or fantasy elements, and some rather inventive and odd visuals in keeping with the setting.

Snow White And The Huntsman's best visuals are in the trailer. Because during the 127 minutes of film, most of it is, as Universal appears to be prone to doing post-Bourne, shot without a tri-pod, steadicam or cameraperson who likes to stand relatively still.

Shaky-Cam is rife and invades over half the film, at the most inappropriate moments, which would at least be fine if the film was directed competently. Unfortunately, first time director Rupert Sanders is as good at handling action as Chris Nolan in Batman Begins. A simple scene where Snow White uses a nail to scratch a baddie is shot in such a way that you don't know if she impaled that beast into his neck, or temple, or just punched him hard. Crazy.

The film starts badly enough, with Chris Hemsworth's Robin Hood-level accent (Think it's Scottish, but it hits Irish, Australian, Drunk and Shire before really getting anywhere near Scottish) narrating us through the early years of Snow White (Her mother wanted a girl as white as snow, with blood that is red and hair that is black. Man, genetic modification of children was crazy back then. Especially with the aborting of fetuses whose blood wasn't red.) Then she died and stuff, and Snow White was pretty (Though the child actress doesn't really know how to act, not the only weak performance here), and Charlize Theron's evil Queen used her sexiness (Which she has in spades) to win over the king, and then kill all of the people.

FINALLY Kristen Stewart appears and the film focuses on her, but after the opening fifteen minutes spending more time on the evil Queen, with Charlize Theron not daring to let the scenery be chomped on by anyone else, we have no standing with this version of Snow White, and neither does Stewart. She does her basic stuff here, no quality acting on display, just bog-standard Twilight paycheck performance, confusing underacting with subtlety. Is she a great and powerful woman hidden from life? Is she a princess who can unite the land? Is she a presence worth hanging around 127 minutes with? I can only answer the last one with fact. No, she's not. And as soon as she leaves the tower, in which she'd been locked up in for a decade, Kristen Stewart isn't given so much of a script than an SAS assault course to traverse, getting muddy, going through shit (Much like the audience), finding a white horse luckily on a beach*, and running and running and running.

*The film is going for gritty, serious, dark aesthetics, but the fairy-tale guff in this is so overplayed, like the perfect white horse, I think delivered by fairies, just let to happen with no context.

And then, all of a sudden, Chris Hemsworth's Huntsman appears in the film, hired after a fight to hunt for Snow White, he finds her and instantly decides she's worth helping against those who, knowing if they don't agree to the already agreed upon deal, won't get the girl, don't agree to the already agreed upon deal. I KNOW! WHAT THE HELL?!?

So, Snowy and Hunts are running away from the bad guys, and then go to a village and learn who Snow White is (She's Snow White), and then run to another forrest, where painfully tonal anomaly/unfunny dwarves Bob Hoskins (Phoning it in with crazy line readings), Toby Jones and Eddie Marsan, doing a duo thing that's embarrassing, Ray Winstone with a mega-stupid haircut, and Nick Frost charged as the comic character of the lot, and as such is as unfunny as ever, whimsically waste time, and sometimes try to have serious moments and backstories that are just fruitless and dull.

Oh, Ian Mcshane is also a dwarf, but he doesn't register because he doesn't tell anyone they have a cunt mouth.

In addition, there's Sam Claffin (He who was meant to break out in Pirates last year, but even that film didn't believe in him) as the Prince Charming, who I figured was actually the brother the entire film, and thus it seemed to get incestuous, chasing after everyone, wanting to protect Snow White.

And so, they all band together with the remnants of the non-Queen forces, and go to fight off the baddies. Or they would, but you can't make heads nor tales of what's happening in the action scenes, or half the exposition for that matter, due to the painfully awful camerawork and direction. It's a messy blur, a hodgepodge of bland, unfocussed activity which, sinfully for an action film, doesn't provide a 3-Act structure to the action, nor a build up or conclusion. It's just another "And then add a fight into the scene to liven things up" movie. Which makes sense with the three different writers working on it.

Snow White And The Huntsman is a painfully crafted, piss-poor paced 'action' film that manages to fail at providing a sense of scale with practical production design that should be glorious, and with poor poor direction and writing, would require amazing acting to even make it mediocre. As it happens, Snow White has over-acting, under-acting, non-acting, comic acting, weird accents and five different tonal ideas in any one scene. A complete and utter mess, a shameful waste of time, and sinfully dull to the point of pain. Avoid.

Is Toby Jones In This Film?

Yes, He Is In This Film

REVIEW BY: ANDREW JONES