Movie Review: Mirror, Mirror

What is with fairy tale stuff these days? We've got "Mirror, Mirror" in theaters with "Snow White and the Huntsman" coming soon, as well as "Grimm" and "Once Upon a Time" on TV.  What bizarre alignment of planets caused this Mother Goose pile up? Rhetorical question. I with draw it.

SPOILER ALERT! I will be talking about some of the things that made this movie different from every other Snow White story.




It's pretty predictable really. It's a Snow White movie. Even if they made Snow White the villain it wouldn't really be anything new. That isn't to say they didn't try. There were a few elements I hadn't seen before.

I want to give props to them for Snow White's eyebrows. Too much has been made of eyebrows in general and plucking has gotten out of control. Too many actresses looking at their stuff from 10-15 years before and fussing over how big their perfectly normal looking eyebrows were. Yes, a unibrow is not attractive, but the plucker needs to remember that Sharpies do not make for good eyebrow substitutes. Snow has more eyebrow that we're used to anymore and it looks good.

The face in the mirror is the same as the evil queen. It does add an element of her talking to herself, an id and ego thing, that you don't get when some vaguely menacing middle eastern man is looking out. I'm not sure why it seemed to get paler as the movie went on.

The marionette warriors were a nice touch. They came for Snow and the dwarves. We immediately see what they are and how to defeat them, but they're clever and I like how they moved like, well, marionettes.

The Bollywood ending was a surprise. Not sure why since it's right there in the trailer. I'm wondering if it was the idea of Indian director Tarsem Singh or if the studio wanted it put in to try to cash in on uptick in movie rentals by people who want to see the Bollywood musicals.

You don't see many asian dwarves in movies. Now you can say you have.

And if we have Julia Roberts you have to have her crazy laugh. It probably has it's own makeup people.

Just eat the fat guy trying to protect his can of shaving cream and leave the rest of us alone, lady.

The movie itself? It felt like it was started by Terry Gilliam and passed off to someone more acceptable to Disney film makers. It's like elements of the kind of strange Gilliam does remained after someone else tried to make it more silly and someone else tried to make it sweet. Still, it's safe to take your kids to, which I don't think we'll be able to say about the movie with the huntsman.

I enjoyed the movie, and wouldn't object if someone puts in the DVD sometime down the road. But I won't be providing the DVD.