I bought this from the $5 bin at Walmart, and watched it at home, all the time expecting something much closer to the fairy tale. The production values were good, including the sets, costumes, and props. The seven dwarf characters ranged from mundane to absolutely annoying. The bear seemed superfluous entirely. Snow White's father was a complete wimp from beginning to end, although looked the part of a fairy tale king. Queen Elspeth was one dimensional, making a convincing totally self-absorbed beauty, but seemed to soft pedal her evil.The story itself was okay, and serves as a stand-alone movie as long as the viewer has never once read the original fairy tale or seen any other version of it (even the famous Disney animated masterpiece), but somehow just doesn't fit together in this production. There is no bad language or nudity, so it's OK for kids, but would probably be a confusing thing for them to watch, at best. 3 out of 10 only.

That is not to say that Snow White is a complete mess, I did love the costume, photography, lighting and set design, the music has a mystical quality and there are two good performances from Vera Farmiga and Warwick Davis and a great one from Miranda Richardson. On the other hand, Kristen Kreuk is very dull and passive albeit beautiful as Snow White, likewise with Tom Irwin. The dwarfs apart from the one played by Davis are lifeless and devoid of personality, the script is stilted, the pace is sluggish and the story has the basic outline of the original story still intact but the telling of it is dull and uninteresting with some scenes going on for too long. In conclusion, not terrible but hardly a fairytale come true either. 5/10 Bethany Cox

I just got a copy of the DVD from a second hand store and watched it without ever having heard of it. It is brilliant! Of course it is not a 90 minute remake of the classic fairy tale. It is certainly not a children's movie either.The makers of this movie just let their imagination run wild and every single move is surprising and any idea that was really too much was happily included in the movie. You'll be smiling from the beginning to the end.And you'll get three fairy tales for the price of one - the main storyline of the Snow Queen (Andersen) and a theme from Snow White and Rose Red (Grimm) are included as well.

I won't claim that I've seen particularly many adventure/fantasy flicks, or many fairy tale films, or even more than three versions of this story(the other two being Snow White in the Dark Forest and the Disney cartoon version). But I will say that this is pretty thin. The plot is changed around a bit, from the original(well, at least I think so... never read it. I'm not a big fan of fairy tales), possibly to surprise the audience, at least a little. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work. It really just serves to distract the viewer slightly from the poor quality of the film. The pacing is completely off, most of the time you're bored out of your mind. The acting ranges, but most of it is sub-par. For some reason, half of the main cast consists of ethnics and other groups of people who really shouldn't be in a western(the part of the world, not the movie genre with cowboys and gunfights) fairy tale. I guess they wanted something unique, but it just seems terribly out of place(no offense to anyone ethnic; I'd be just as opposed to a film set in Spain featuring an all-white cast). The hunter and the king are... Mexican, it appears, in spite of them being supposed to be typical white folk. Kreuk really has far too dark skin to be Snow White, despite clearly having done all in her power(or was that the make-up department? Anyway...) to get pale. One of the 'dwarfs' was clearly a normally-sized man(though it's not as bad as 'in the Dark Forest' where only one or two of them were actually midgets). Speaking of the dwarfs, they act astoundingly… jolly. They seemed far too merry, considering they're supposed to be miners in the original fairy tale. I mean, I can accept that they're happy or positive, but the writer or director practically turned them into Tele-tubbies. Most of the new story elements seem stupid and unneeded, though I liked the addition of the queen's past. The ending suffers from dangerous amounts of Deus Ex Machina, probably because the writer had written him or herself into a hole, and decided to just have it end in an unsatisfying and abrupt manner. The whole 'fairest of them all' bit with the mirrors was painfully overdone and really, really overplayed. The special effects are nothing special. All in all, I suggest you either read the book or dust off your copy of the Disney version instead of wasting any time on this film. I recommend this only to kids who've seen the Disney version more times than they care to keep track of, and want to see a lesser version to remind themselves of how good Disney's version actually is, all things considered. No one else should bother. 1/10