I love a whodunit – especially one with a light comic touch. Rian Johnson’s Knives Out and Glass Onion are two of my most rewatched recent films, and they owe a great deal to everything from Agatha Christie to Sherlock Holmes to Columbo to the criminally underseen film The Last of Sheila.

So now, imagine my delight at Netflix’s The Residence, a high-energy comic whodunit set at the White House.

The story is this: One night, during a state dinner honoring Australia, A.B. Wynter, the head usher of the White House — played by Giancarlo Esposito — is found dead. The chief of the D.C. police brings in the brilliant detective he trusts most: Cordelia Cupp, played with verve and poise by the wonderful Uzo Aduba. Looking every bit the tweedy detective, only far more stylish, Cupp sweeps in, won’t let anyone leave, and starts to question witnesses. FBI agent Edwin Park (Randall Park), assigned to help, can only try to keep up with her.

So who did it? Wynter had many conflicts with many people, we will learn. Was it the president’s top advisor, played by Ken Marino? Was it the loyal staffer, played by Susan Kelechi Watson, who was set to succeed Wynter as head usher? Maybe it was the president’s loathed brother, played by Jason Lee, or the temperamental pastry chef played by Bronson Pinchot. What about the boozy butler, the president’s mother-in-law, the social secretary, or the engineer?

The show will tell you. The answer will be fair; the murderer is not a random person who appears at the last minute. The evidence makes sense, and much of it has been there all along. It is, in other words, a properly executed whodunit, with all the pleasures that suggests. You will get red herrings and misdirections, but Cordelia is a reliable narrator and only says what she knows to be true. She’s an avid birder (just like President Teddy Roosevelt, she points out), so you know she is detail-oriented and patient. She’s also wickedly funny, but her delivery is usually dry as a bone.

At the same time, we also get scenes from the congressional hearings about the investigation that happen later, which take testimony in preparation for the release of a report. That might be one more framing device than the show needs, but Al Franken and Eliza Coupe are funny as they play senators bickering disagreeably.

There are eight episodes; the last is almost 90 minutes long, and it’s the segment in every great story of this kind where the detective gathers all the suspects, explains the crime, and announces the killer. The show probably doesn’t need 90 minutes of that; it could have used a trim in this section. That’s the closest thing to a beef that I have. But they’re being true to the roots of the genre by allowing Aduba to make a meal of it.

There’s a lot of respect for tradition here; the episodes have titles that pay tribute to other murder mysteries — there are episodes called “Knives Out” and “Dial M for Murder.” (And one called “The Fall of the House of Usher,” which is a good enough pun that it’s easy to forgive even if the original is not quite a murder mystery.) A good execution of a beloved formula is a wonderful thing, and you won’t regret letting this one suck you in.

This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.

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It was about time that Disney would eventually get to reimagining their first-ever feature-length animated production in live-action after remaking many of their classic princesses, such as Cinderella, Mulan, and Belle, just to name a few. For a studio that has financially thrived over the past decade on live-action retellings of their most beloved movies, you would think that Snow White would be at the top of their list. It is the one that started it all more than 90 years ago and still holds up to this day as one of the defining achievements in animated cinema – not only in its staggering, artful animation but also in how it pioneered many techniques that animators still use to this day when creating fully-realized, hand-drawn worlds.

Yet, one had to wait until 2025, nine years after development on the remake started, to finally see what director Marc Webb and writer Erin Cressida Wilson had in mind when readapting the iconic Disney character to contemporary sensibilities. When Rachel Zegler, a burgeoning star who, fresh off the success of her towering breakout turn in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, was cast as the titular character, one would think that perhaps this one could be special. Disney isn’t making these for artistic gains but purely commercial ones. However, if I’m to view these remakes, it’d be great if they would at least infuse some life and excitement into their productions when many of them fail to recapture a magical feeling or, at the very least, tickle a child’s imagination, just like the animated originals continue to do so for the people who discover them for the first time. 

The best example of this is Jon Favreau’s photorealistic remake of The Lion King, one that strips the soul and artistry that made the original movie stand the test of time. It was only made for monetary reasons, and guess what? It was one of the highest-grossing movies of 2019. That’s why we had the Barry Jenkins-directed prequel (a step above the Jon Favreau film), and that’s why we now have the 2025 version of Snow White finally gracing our screens this weekend. My hopes for the remake weren’t terribly high, but Zegler’s casting certainly piqued my interest. She is a bonafide natural talent whose work on West Side Story deserved so many more accolades that Zegler received, but we all know she’s poised to become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, no matter the quality of the movie she stars in. 

If anything, Snow White is only worth watching for her. It’s incredible how much heavy lifting she does every single time the protagonist appears on screen, making us forget about its dreary visuals, garish CGI dwarves and animals, and thinly written supporting characters that add very little in this otherwise lifeless affair. Zegler’s singing voice is so powerful that even the biggest cynics can’t fully say the movie is an affront to everything cinema stands for, especially when she deftly captures the essence and vibrant energy of the character readapted through families by Disney’s transposition of the Brothers Grimm’s story in 1937. 

It’s hard not to smile at Zegler’s rendition of “Whistle While You Work” during a rousing number in which she inspires the Dwarves – Doc (Jeremy Swift), Bashful (Titus Burgess), Dopey (Andrew Barth Feldman), Grumpy (Martin Klebba), Sneezy (Jason Kravits), Happy (George Salazar), and Sleepy (Andy Grotelueschen) – to have a more positive outlook on life, even if the computer-generated characters are petrifying to look at. We almost forget we’re watching Zegler sing inside a fully synthesized environment, with little to no movement and expression in Mandy Walker’s photography (a crushing disappointment for a usually great cinematographer, whose work in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis should’ve won the Academy Award in 2023). That’s how good she is, and in infusing the movie with so much positive energy, she inspires us to keep watching, even when everything around her doesn’t work.

To be fair, the modernization of the story by way of Wilson’s screenplay isn’t entirely bad. Snow White isn’t relying on a prince to save her; that character is reinterpreted more as a friend than a romantic interest for a good chunk of the runtime, and how she unites everyone to defeat the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot) does possess an uplifting, inspiring message that resonates with the current times we live in. Unfortunately, Webb’s execution of these ideas is so poor that one thinks we’re watching a Snow White fan film, not a $270 million Disney blockbuster. Where is the money on the screen? Where’s Walker’s usually expressive cinematography that should theoretically transpose the imaginative frames of the animated original in an entirely new light through live action? I have no idea because we instead get entirely artificial, sludgy, colorless digitized locations and photography with zero depth of field that turns everything into pure mush. This ultimately puts us at arm’s length with Snow White’s friendship formed by either the dwarves or the prince known as Jonathan (played here by Andrew Burnap).

While their arc evolves in a more romantic light as the movie progresses, the two possess little to no chemistry together. Burnap can’t, sadly, match Zegler’s ineffable, effervescent charm as Snow White. The writing certainly doesn’t help him – he barely gets a form of development other than being a member of a group of bandits who want to reclaim the kingdom to what it once was before the Evil Queen took over. Unlike Snow White, whose arc is fully formed and possesses enough agency for young girls to latch onto and be inspired by, we don’t get to know him at a cellular level. Zegler genuinely lights up the screen, but she can only go so far when the camera is never positioned to serve her, the computer-generated dwarves are nightmarish, and Gal Gadot is so terribly miscast as the tale’s legendary Evil Queen. 

The Wonder Woman star seems to be in an entirely different picture than her lead star and possesses none of the emotional texture and range to position herself as a formidable foe for Snow White. Even when playing the old lady who gives the protagonist the poison apple (“true love’s kiss” is still the antidote, even if Wilson overhauled the prince and made significant changes in their romantic storyline), the contrast between Zegler and Gadot is far too great, especially when both sing. The difference is so notable that one can easily spot autotune in Gadot’s interpretation of “All is Fair,” while Zegler requires none.

While we’ve had many Evil Queens reinterpreted away from the Disneyfied version of the character, most recently (brilliantly) played by Charlize Theron and Julia Roberts, Gadot’s version had the chance to bring the ultimate version of the Disney villain to life in ways none of the animators who worked on the original film would think possible. Sadly, the only memorable aspect of her iteration is Patrick Page’s Magic Mirror, whose note-perfect intonations give real gravitas to one of Snow White’s most memorable visual aspects.

This version of Snow White has no tangible image that will stick with us long after the credits have rolled, let alone last 97 years in the public consciousness. Worse yet, this remake contains no memorable songs, at least the original ones written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Even if Zegler sings her heart out and imbues her performance with so much raw emotion that explaining it in words will not do justice to just how incredible she is, none of the newer songs will ruminate in my memory as much as “I Always Wanted a Brother” did for Mufasa: The Lion King. Say what you will about Jenkins’ film, but it at least tried to give expressivity and create visual poetry through a technology that strips an artist of his individual touch. Jenkins was challenged and wanted to prove to everyone that making art with these limitations was possible. That artistic statement made it surprisingly moving. 

But Marc Webb doesn’t have an artistic statement or vision, no matter if he surrounds himself with highly gifted artists behind the camera (Walker as cinematographer, Sandy Powell as costume designer, and Kave Quinn in the production design department). That’s why his remake of Snow White will have little to no lasting effect on audiences beyond the cementing of Rachel Zegler as a true talent within Hollywood, one who deserves to enjoy a fruitful and hopefully storied career in film, television, and theater, whose performances will touch generations to come as she deservedly becomes a star. That alone can’t make me entirely mad, irrespective of how mind-numbingly boring this remake is, reaching a new low for Disney’s live-action IP-milking canon.

Watch it for Zegler – and Zegler only.

SCORE: ★1/2

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