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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Who can’t wait to live on other planets? Second thoughts may be in order after seeing the woolly sci-fi-horror trip “Ash” from Grammy-winning L.A. music guru-turned-director Flying Lotus (a.k.a. Steven Ellison), who spins a bare-bones game of cosmic survival with true sound-and-image flair and an unbridled enthusiasm for the strange beauty of mutant gore.

That this modestly budgeted freak-out was assembled by a fusion artist, someone expert at scoring your daydreams and nightlife, is never in doubt. In fact, as we become oriented to the movie’s space station on the titular planet, where crew member Riya (Eiza González) awakens bloodied and confused by the grim reality that her colleagues have been brutally murdered, the sputtering fluorescent hues, jarring memory flashes and woozy electronic tones that accompany her tour of the premises suggest the remnants of a bad rave night as much as they do an interstellar mission gone terribly wrong.

Early on in Jonni Remmler’s screenplay, there’s a brief flashback to the outpost’s five-person team hanging out, teasing each other about what their Neil Armstrong-like statement is going to be and hinting at their exploratory aims for humankind. (Surprise, surprise: Earth’s becoming uninhabitable.) The men — stoic Capt. Adhi (Iko Uwais) and good-natured Kevin (Beulah Koale) and Davis (Ellison) — seem to take their task seriously, while hard-edged Clarke (Kate Elliott) appears to be the wisecracker and Riya appears simultaneously no-nonsense and cynical.

That’s it for movie chitchat, however. The director, in sync with his cinematographer, Richard Bluck, would much rather spend his energies pulling you through a moodily lighted, otherworldly gauntlet of aftermath menace, kaleidoscopic starscapes and flashbacks that hint at a suddenly amnesiac Riya’s role in the slaughter, than let you get too caught up in portrayal details or plot mechanics.

Still, the mystery of what went down increasingly animates Riya (and us), especially after a guy named Brion (Aaron Paul, reliably grave) suddenly shows up, having answered the distress call sent to his orbiting spacecraft. He wants to convince her to pay more attention to worsening oxygen levels and to salvage the mission by getting the hell out. But as her memories start to return, more is revealed about the real threat, which turns out to be very much the kind of penetrative threat an in-his-prime John Carpenter would have mightily enjoyed turning into the stuff of our crunchy, squishy nightmares.

The legacy of “Alien” is there, of course, in the Ripley parallels, but Carpenter nods are too — especially “The Thing” and a “Halloween”-like emergence from an out-of-focus background. (It may be why the terror titan warranted a place in the end-credits thank-yous.) The thrumming score too is decidedly influenced by the pulsating synth themes of Carpenter, with some of Angelo Badalamenti’s melodic melancholia thrown in for good measure. But the soundtrack is also its own evocative work of intoxicating techno-brood, one that could be piped from your car speakers to readily turn any routine neighborhood errand into a suddenly ominous excursion. (Just as playing parts of Bernard Herrmann’s “Vertigo” score instantly gives you the feeling you’re tailing the car ahead of you.)

“Ash” is categorically a vibe more than it is an especially unique story or illuminating character study, even if González’s steely beauty conveys plenty about the psychological stakes at hand. But in this age of expensive and overwrought world-building, it’s Ellison’s experiential care with well-worn material that delivers the goods. There’s also something resonant in an Afrofuturist take on colonialist sci-fi, one that marks its narrative space with such a potent mix of planetary wonder, identity peril and alien violence. It’s refreshing to be reminded by movies like this that we should always be asking: Who’s doing the invading, again?

“Novocaine” stars Jack Quaid as Nathan Caine, a man with a condition that makes him unable to feel pain. This is an action movie, and it sounds like a man who can’t feel pain would fit right into the role of action hero, right? Actually, no. Caine’s condition is just terribly inconvenient in his everyday life. He could get cut or burned without realizing it, and if the wound is left untreated, he could get an infection. He doesn’t have the instinct to keep his tongue away from his teeth, so he has to abstain from solid foods or else he could chomp right into his tongue. He can’t even feel the pangs associated with having to go to the bathroom, so he just goes every three hours whether he needs to or not.

Caine’s condition has led to social awkwardness, and although he’s nice to people, he has few real friends outside of unseen online gamer Roscoe (Jacob Batalon). But things change when he starts a relationship with fellow bank employee Sherry (Amber Midthunder), who has her own history with physical pain. They go on one date and Caine immediately knows he’s in love with her. He’s at a rare high point in his life at work the next day when a trio of robbers massacre that bank and take Sherry hostage as they flee. The sense of fear and potential loss is the worst feeling Caine has ever had in his life, and he’s going to rescue Sherry no matter what happens to his body in the process.

This means getting into a series of fights with the robbers (Evan Hengst, Conrad Kemp, and Ray Nicholson). He’s nowhere near as tough or skilled as they are, but he can use his condition to his advantage. He can get hit, but he can get back up. He can stall for time by taking a beating or enduring torture until help arrives. He can even use weapons that his enemies are too afraid to touch because they’re scalding hot or submerged in a deep fryer. By the way, is it weird that this movie makes me unusually inclined toward cannibalism with a scene where Caine makes his hand extra-crispy?

This movie can thank its lucky stars for Jack Quaid, whose sincerity and commitment to the character are the only interesting things about the movie. I was really looking forward to seeing Amber Midthunder again after she carried the “Predator” prequel “Prey” in 2022, but she’s disappointing in a predictable role here. Batalon is just playing a less interesting version of his “Spider-Man” sidekick character. Betty Gabriel has some heartfelt moments as a cop, but her character doesn’t have much impact on the story. Perhaps most disappointing is Ray Nicholson as the lead villain. He was so expressive and unnerving last year in “Smile 2,” but I didn’t get any of that from his bland performance here. I’d have let Conrad Kemp carry the load as primary antagonist, he has some scene-stealing qualities about his face.

Caine’s convoluted rescue mission reminded me of the convoluted plot of “Love Hurts” from last month, a movie that I decried while praising Quaid’s performance in “Companion” in the same article. Perhaps it’s appropriate that my opinion of “Novocaine” falls squarely between those two films. This movie could have been a lot more brainless, but I quibble with its predictable story (I guessed one twist just from the trailers), lame characters outside of the lead, and tonal inconsistency. The advertising makes this movie look a lot more comedic than it is. There are gags, to be sure, but there are also long stretches where the movie plays things unexpectedly straight. Not that actors like Quaid and Gabriel aren’t good at playing things straight, but there were times when I noticed I hadn’t laughed for what seemed like several minutes. Like many of the punches Caine takes, this movie wasn’t exactly “painful,” but it certainly didn’t do me much good.

Grade: C

“Novocaine” is rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, and language throughout. Its running time is 110 minutes.

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.