Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” Certainly not this latest iteration of the Snow White story. Starring Julia Roberts, Nathan Lane, Lily Collins and Armie Hammer, Mirror, Mirror is the age old fairy tale of an orphaned princess raised by an evil step-mama. When the princess turns out to be a great beauty the jealous stepmother sends her off to be killed. Only, the kindly killer frees her and she runs off to be found by a small colony of dwarves.

Thank goodness there’s little change in the plot. Mirror, Mirror keeps much of the charm of the original Snow White, but that’s about the best thing I can say. The story elements are just too silly: a weird chess like game with small ships on people’s heads, the prince gets beaten up by the dwarves, repeatedly (and is also is spelled by a “puppy love” spell) and the mirror character is a weird representation of the queen.

Unfortunately Julia Roberts is entirely too likeable a character as the evil queen. I want Julia Roberts to always be the good “guy,” and she comes off as being too good to be really bad. Check out Disney’s Enchanted: Susan Sarandon’s Queen Narissa has a much better evil laugh and she’s really easy to despise. And Julia Roberts steals every scene. Whether it’s Snow White (Collins), Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer) or the queen’s toady, Brighton (Lane), when Roberts is on the screen she holds the attention. Snow White, particularly, must catch every eye and steal the show. The prince and the toady must also pull some attention from the queen or their characters disappear.

Only during the classic ball scene did White shine, and there just wasn’t enough of it. With a white swan headdress Snow White was truly the center of attention. Armie Hammer too, though I think he made a pretty good prince, just didn’t have screen presence. His performance was fine but for a story that borders on melodrama Hammer’s performance was too reserved. Well, except when he was licking Julia Roberts under the puppy love spell, Ha! Check out James Marsden in Enchanted or Cary Elwes in The Princess Bride. The prince has got to be bigger than life.

The incredible Nathan Lane too was not what I hoped. He was good as the obsequious toady, Brighton, but I really wanted to see Lane challenged: think Iago in Disney’s Aladdin or Igor in Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein. There is something quite refreshing about a toady that’s not really.

A couple of small points: I loved the scenery and the special effects were pretty good, except those surrounding the mirror character, and the beast was classic. But I would have loved to see more of Sean Bean. Bean is such a good character actor it would have been nice to see him interacting with the young Snow White. And the dwarves were just a little too hip for a classic tale. But Snow White’s change into the leader of the outlaws, excellent! It brought her character out, unfortunately way too late in the film.

I admit, having seen the trailers, I wanted to dislike the film more than I did, but it turned out to be marginally better than I expected. Mirror, Mirror is probably a good film for younger children but not so much for an older crowd.

Rating: 1.5 stars out of 5.

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