SNOW WHITE & THE HUNTSMAN -- 7(4)

There is a time in every one's life when things are definitely NOT FUNNY.  It's the Season of Earnestness and it usually hits people in their early teens.   I'm pretty sure mine lasted till my mid-twenties which probably made me insufferable.  If you aren't quite sure what I am talking about, think of any 13 year old girl you know and remember any conversation you had with her.  Did someone say something to someone else and it was HORRIBLE!!?   Were they SO MEAN!?  Did she get a poor grade on something and will that grade follow her on her GPA for the REST OF HER LIFE!!!?

I think you get the picture.   When you are young you feel things more deeply, more intensely, and you haven't quite realized that life will go on.  It has also been proven by research that the older you get, the less dopamine-receptive your brain gets.  So, while some could call that "wisdom", I call it "Sheesh, this dubstep that the kids are listening to just sounds like a loud 80's modem..."

SNOW WHITE & THE HUNTSMAN is 100% earnest and it's kind of endearing.  Charlize Theron claws her way out of a feather-filled tar pit and it is NOT FUNNY.  Kristen Stewart wakes from the dead and grabs the hand of an arrow-shooting, over-dramatic, duke junior to shoot him a look of pure hatred and it is NOT FUNNY.

"I totally hate you back!"

 Even the dwarfs are fallen from glory and humor, bemoaning their wretched fate and singing a lot of sad a capella songs.  And that, my friends, is really not funny, specially since they aren't real little people.  (Though I was happy to see Nick Frost.)

"We dwarfs would be more cheerful if we weren't walking in a ditch 10 feet behind Thor."

It was a solidly made movie which should appeal to any overly-intense person you know.  Or, it will appeal to people who kind of liked Lord of the Rings for all the walking around people did.
But, most importantly, it will appeal somewhat to the billions of folks who saw the Twilight movies and loved them and that's really what is important, right?

For the record, Kristen Stewart wasn't completely awful.  I'm pretty sure it was good editing which masked her inability to make appropriate faces.   The very end, though, when there is nothing to do but actually look at her "acting", things get a bit awkward.  Like, an entire kingdom just stands there and watches her face do weird things while she continues to not say anything.  At all.  For a solid three minutes.  It was so weird my sister leaned over and said "I bet she had a speech she was so lousy at that they had to cut it and just had her stand here like a git instead."

However, in this shot, her acting was impeccable.

(p.s.  I just looked at imdb.com and discovered that a Snow White & the Huntsman 2 is now announced.  This automatically makes me dislike the movie I just saw.  The altered score is reflected in parenthesis above.)