Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

I decided it would be good to kick things off with a review of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, since it was the first animated movie…kind of. It was the first animated movie in the English speaking world, the first in color, the first with synchronized sound, the first to be 100% traditionally animated, but it was not the first animated movie, period. That honor would belong to The Apostle, a 1917 cutout animated movie from Argentina. It is now considered lost. The oldest surviving animated film is The Adventures of Prince Achmed from Germany in 1926.  And that concludes our animation history lesson for today.

Just in case you are one of maybe five or so people who are old enough to read, but are still scratching your head thinking “Who is this White Snow you speak of?”, I will go through the plot. The movie opens with a queen asking her magic mirror to tell her who is the fairest in the land. Instead of it saying “you, of course”, it tells her that there is someone fairer. It then proceeds to describe this individual as having “lips as red as a rose, hair as black as ebony, skin white as snow”. Since there is apparently only one human being on the entire planet that fits that description the Queen lets out a gasp “Snow White!”

We then cut to a scene of Snow White cleaning the stairs. Although she is the Queen’s step daughter and a princess she is forced to dress in rags and do chores because apparently the Queen must not have any servants or something. As she is singing a song with her animal friends Prince Charming scales the fence just to see who is doing the singing. Snow White is unsurprisingly frightened by this and flees to her bedroom. But don’t worry. Once he starts singing, she decides that he is Mr. Right despite the fact she doesn't know his name.

            










The Queen decides that Snow White must be killed for her heinous crime of being more beautiful than she. In order to do the deed she gets her Huntsman to take Snow White in the forest to be killed and to bring her heart back in a box. Considering this is a fancy wooden box with a symbol of dagger going through a heart, I suspect that she must have this done often. Her bedroom probably has a collection of dozens of rotting human hearts from all the people who ever p.o.’d her in any way over the years. Pleasant dreams tonight kiddies!

            The Huntsman takes her out to pick flowers. He then sneaks up behind her but was too mesmerized by her hotness and couldn't do it. He tells her to run away and never come back. She obeys and enters the forest made of bad acid trips. When she collapses with fear, the animals come out to cheer her up. This is strange, because in my experience rabbits, deer, squirrels, and other various woodland animals run away from humans. Maybe this only happens in medieval Germany or something.

       











The creatures help her find a place to stay by taking her to a house secluded in the middle of the woods. Snow White sees nothing out of the ordinary despite she has to crouch to fit through the front door. She believes that the house belongs to seven orphans. Since the house is an absolute pigsty, the first thing she does is clean it up. This scene gets a lot of flak from feminists that say it is sexist. They think the way she cleans and sings a happy song about it is a message to little girls that it is your place to do housework and you are going to love it. I personally don’t see a problem with it. I always just thought she was doing it to be kind and was naturally a bit of a neat freak.

"Breaking an entry is fun"

            

          As all of that is going on we see the Dwarves Dwarfs working in their diamond mine. Their names are Grumpy, Sneezy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Dopey, and Doc. And it is painfully obvious who is who. I must point out that this mine is bursting at the seams with pre-cut gems the size of apples right on the surface, but the little guys are digger even deeper. Just…why?

            Before we go any deeper, there is something I must say: when I was little I was borderline obsessed with Dopey. I had a Dopey sweatshirt, Dopey doll, Dopey watch, a crazy straw with a little figurine of Dopey on it, not to mention all the other Snow White themed stuff I had that featured him. Also I was him for Halloween one year. I am not making that up. I am not sure why I liked him. Maybe I liked the way he never talked.  Okay personal insight on my childhood memories is over and we can get back to the story.

Doc went to college to avoid all the hard labor. In unrelated news Dopey looks like he has been living up to his name again.

This section would not be complete without this image

            Meanwhile at Casa del Dwarf Snow White decides to venture upstairs. Giving the condition the kitchen and living room were in, I would be a tad leery to venture upstairs, but then again that’s just me. She sees the Dwarfs’ beds with their names on it. When she gets to Dopey she bursts out laughing. Clearly she found the egregious use of 1930’s slang in a timeless fairy tale as amusing as I did…wait…hold on a second. What was that? Dopey, Sneezy, and Happy have their beds pushed together. Like with no space in between them. Sneezy has to crawl across one of the other guys to get into his bed. Okay…Anyway, Snow White decides that this is the place to lie down and go to sleep despite the fact I am sure Sneezy’s bed is filled with used snot rags.

I guess what happens at the Dwarfs' Cottage, stays at the Dwarfs' Cottage.

            The Dwarfs come marching home to see that the lights are on and the chimney is smoking. Suspecting trouble must be brewing they approach with great caution. Upon entering the house they elect Dopey to be the Guinea pig to investigate what is upstairs. Once he sees Snow White in their beds, he is terrified and bolts down the stairs. He is so frightened he even uses his vocal cords. On the way out the door he gets mixed up in a bunch of pots and pans and the other guys mistaken him for a monster. After beating the crap out of him for a couple of minutes Doc exclaims “Hold on there. It’s only Dopey!” Dopey uses elaborate game of charades to which Doc takes to mean that there is a monster in the bedroom.

I think what Dopey is saying is that there is a girl in his
bed, but I suppose the monster thing is more believable.

            The Dwarfs plan to attack by sneaking up with their pickaxes ready to go. Thankfully Doc had the sense of pulling back the bed sheets before they did anything. They saw that there wasn’t a monster at all, but a girl. When she began to stir they hid behind the bed. She looked up and reacted with the same amount of horror I would have if I woke up and realized I was being watched by seven old guys. But her horror turns to amusement when she realizes that what she thought were child sized chairs and beds were actually owned by little men. This prompts a guessing game where she tries to figure out who was who. If I were the Dwarfs I would have totally trolled her. Like Happy needs to start yawning, Bashful needs to start sneezing, and someone needs to light up a joint (Snow White: “You must be Dopey!”).

This is actually Walt Disney's favorite gag from the movie.

            After the formalities are over, it is time for dinner. Being the uncouth swine that they are, the Dwarfs dive in like dogs that haven’t eaten in month. Snow White makes them go outside to wash since they were dirty and smelly. For some odd reason they have at least seven bars of soap even though they act as if basic hygiene is total enigma to them. Grumpy, the He-Man Woman Hater, refuses to let a female tell him what to do, just makes fun and laughs at the other guys. Doc says not to listen to “that old warthog” and Grumpy replies that “you nanny goats make me sick”. I am guessing these must be vile obscenities in the Dwarf community. This leads to a bunch of wacky shenanigans such as the other guys putting bows in his beard and drenching him in perfume (one question: Where did they get that stuff from?) not to mention Dopey accidentally ingesting a bar of soap.

This doesn't need one of my dry remarks to be funny. 

"Hey Doc, want to play doctor?"

            We cut back to the Queen’s castle where she is showing the Mirror “Snow White’s” heart in a box. After the Mirror reveals that the Huntsman gave her the slip, she goes psycho. Throwing all rational thought out of the window, she goes to her secret evil lab to transform herself into a hag. This is different than the original story where she merely dresses like a peddler woman. My guess is that they did not want to portray Snow White as a bloody moron who can’t see through her step-mother’s paper thin disguise. Since Snow White deserves a fate worse than death for her abomination against society, the witch decides that a sleeping death would be most appropriate. That way the Dwarfs would bury her alive and she would suffocate to death.

            










Back at Chez Dwarf, the little men decide to through a party for Snow White. Dopey gets on top of Sneezy to make a size appropriate dance partner for Snow White. The party comes to an end when Sneezy lets out one of his infamous sneezes (seriously dude, take a Zyrtec). The Dwarfs ask to hear a song from Snow White. She sings the famous Someday My Prince Will Come. This is very hypnotic to the Dwarfs, who except for Grumpy, were in a dream like state.

Ah, yes. It just wouldn't be 1937 without jokes about ethnic stereotypes. 

My guess is that Sneezy was on top last night. 

 Luckily for her, she finished her song just before the alarm to go to bed went off. They thought it would be nice to allow her to have the bedroom upstairs while they stay downstairs. This leads to a totally pointless fight over a pillow that was on a bench. They could have grabbed their pillows from upstairs and let Snow White use that one. Do you guys seriously want your princess resting her head against Sneezy’s snot and drool soaked pillow? I didn’t think so.   

I get the feeling that this is not an uncommon occurrence.

We cut to a brief scene of the witch lacing an apple with the poison. She walks further down in her lair to get on a boat to get out. I noticed she has lots of skeletons hanging around. Who were these people? Snow White’s father? The previous Fairest in the Land? Lord Starchbottem? (Seriously if you have not seen The 7D on Disney XD you should check it out. I know it looks god-awful, but if you pretend that they are different characters that happen to have the same names as the Dwarfs it ain’t half bad).

            The next morning the Dwarfs leave for work and warn Snowy to not let any strangers in. She kisses each one of them on the head. Grumpy realizes that he truly does care for her, but he has to put on his tough guy exterior, lest anyone else knows he has a soft side. There is something that I need to point out, and I might ruin a few childhoods in the process. You have been warned. I know it was totally innocent, but Dopey wants Snow White to kiss him on the lips. Not only that, but he seemed way too aroused by the kiss on the head he received from a 14-year-old! So yeah…let’s move on.

Dopey you sick freak.

            S.W. is now home alone baking pies for the Dwarfs when Witchie Poo shows up. The animal friends immediately know something is fishy, and attack the witch. Snow White figures that someone that ugly can’t be evil and scolds the critters. They know that there is only one thing they can do at this point: get the Dwarfs. The movie keeps switching back and forth between the witch convincing Snow White to eat the apple and the animals convincing the Dwarfs to get back to the cottage. Sleepy rather nonchalantly states that the Queen must have Snow White. The fact that Sleepy can understand animal talk and acts like he couldn’t care less has me nonplussed.

            











The Dwarfs begin to panic, but it was Grumpy of all people who leads the charge. Mounting deer like horses they take off to the cottage. They get there just in time to see the Witch leave (which begs the question how did they know she was the Queen in disguise?). They chase her up the side of a hill where she gets trapped. She decides to roll a boulder on them, but fortunately for our minute heroes a random bolt of lightning strikes the cliff she is standing on and she falls to her doom.

            Unfortunately it was too late for Snow White. She ate the apple and fell into a coma. The Dwarfs apparently could not tell the difference between someone that was sleeping and a dead person (looks like Doc better change his name to Quack) so they build her a coffin. They find her too beautiful to bury so they let her lay in the woods. One thing that I find a little disturbing is that they were okay with watching her rot (assuming she was actually dead). That’s a little grody. Prince Charming shows up (hey remember him) and can’t help but to kiss her. Unbeknownst to him, this actually breaks the curse. She comes to life and everyone rejoices. She waves and kisses her little friends good-bye as her Prince takes her away to his castle.

The End

The Pros:

• The Dwarfs are excellent sidekick characters. As previously mentioned, I used to love Dopey.
• The soundtrack is great. Many of the songs are catchy and the score is great. The piece at the end gave me a little tear in my eye, it was so beautiful.
• The animation (for the most) part still holds up.
• Very memorable.

The Cons:

• Snow White’s voice is so obnoxious. She sings like Betty Boop.
• The rotoscoping of the human characters (other than the Dwarfs and the Witch) doesn’t age too well. They are also so stiff and wooden.
• The first act of this movie is dull. I mean duller than dishwater dull.

Overall I give in ****1/2 out of *****.