First Things First…
It looks like this Snow-White isn’t even the same character as the one from “Little Snow-White,” which I reviewed earlier this year. That’s the version of the story the Disney movie is based on, with the seven dwarfs, magic mirror, and evil stepmother/queen plotting to poison and kill Snow-White.
I don’t know what this story is about, but my one hope is that Snow-White doesn’t become a seven-year-old bride.
1 Thing I Like
1. Fearing the Bear
The first few pages of the story establish Snow-White and Rose-Red as perfect little angels. They’re sisters who are also inseparable best friends. They help their mother keep their cottage in impeccable condition, and they’re so pure and innocent that they can wander the forest unrestricted—and even sleep there overnight—and the animals are nothing but friendly to them.
That’s why my sense of dread on their behalf grew so fast when they let the bear into their cottage.
It almost feels like overkill, making them so perfect, except that they seem like easy victims to be taken advantage of when this bear wants to be let in out of the cold, and for them to beat the snow out of his fur.
As they become more and more comfortable with him, I thought the story was going in a dark direction, where the bear would at least try to eat the girls—maybe even succeed. He turns out to be trustworthy, but that section of the story, when I wasn’t sure about him, is the best part.
1 Thing I’m Mixed On
1. Incompetent Wickedness
The dwarf, not the bear, winds up being the antagonist of the story. He’s a dick to the girls and even tries to serve them up to the bear in order to save himself. Even worse, we find out at the end that the bear is really a prince who the dwarf cursed.
That said, we don’t get to see his wickedness firsthand. Our experience with him is literally just him constantly getting his beard tangled in things, and the girls having to rescue him, only for him to begrudge them for the beard trim.
He’s clearly capable of some nasty shit. But he’d be a more compelling villain if we actually got to see some of it.
2 Things I Don’t Like
2. Always Prepared to Clip a Beard
Who carries scissors everywhere they go?
Every time the girls run into the dwarf and his beard is stuck, Snow-White just takes a pair of scissors out of her pocket and cuts off a piece of it.
It reminds me of an episode of Supernatural where Dean is trying to get through a door to save Sam but can’t. Sam tells him to break the door down, and Dean is like, “Well let me just grab my battering ram.”
Only, if that episode was written like this story, Dean actually would’ve had a battering ram handy, just because.
1. Shedding His Fur, Finding His Bride
OMG this ending…
In a matter of two paragraphs, the bear kills the dwarf to release himself from a curse we knew nothing about… turns back into a prince… then marries Snow-White, while his brother marries Rose-Red.
At the very least, I wish they would’ve planted more seeds that the bear was cursed, so this didn’t feel out of left field.
And then—why must they get married?
I don’t think the girls’ ages are mentioned, so I’m just gonna pretend they’re not super young. But isn’t breaking the curse enough of a happy ending? Do we really need to marry off these girls? One of whom marries someone who’s not even a character or ever mentioned in the story.
Tim Matassa
