Long before meeting Snow White, Ravenna (Theron) is on a power-mad march while her sister Freya (Blunt) pursues love, which ends in tragedy. So Freya becomes an ice queen, laying frozen waste to her kingdom and forcing captured children to become her huntsmen. With romance forbidden, her best fighters Eric and Sara (Hemsworth and Chastain) must be punished. Years later, Eric is trying to help clean up Ravenna's mess. In search of her magic mirror, he and four dwarfs (Frost, Brydon, Smith and Roach) are on a collision course with Freya.

Effects expert turned director Nicolas-Troyan effectively integrates digital work into live-action, so the film looks terrific. Colleen Atwood's costumes are particularly spectacular, nicely set off by the edgy sets. But the tone is all over the place. Mainly it's dark and moody, which is painfully dull, especially in action scenes that often take place, Game of Thrones-style, at night in the mud. This swamps any momentum, leaving the audience gasping for some romantic spark or a good laugh.

As a result, Smith walks off with the entire film, adding a cheeky grin that makes her character much more fun than the bitter diva queens. Theron and Blunt look fabulous, and pour buckets of soap-style emoting into their scenes, but it's difficult to care about these characters when another moment of cheap magic is likely to undermine any life-or-death tension. But then no one in this franchise stays dead. And Smith's barbed chemistry with Brydon leaves the likeable Hemsworth and Chastain looking rather perfunctory.

None of this would matter if the film had a compelling story, but the plot is a mess. The screenwriters simply ignore any sense of fairy tale logic to push the characters into yet another set piece, eliminating any suspense or emotion in the process. Fans of big spectacles may find plenty to please the eyes, but the utter emptiness of it all will leave even them wondering why anyone bothered to carry on this story. Well that's not true: everyone knows why they did it.

themes, violence, innuendo

30.Mar.16