Disney Movie Countdown Day 12 - Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

It's good thing the Queen was beautiful to start with. If she was say, a 3-legged hunchback and decided to kill everyone less beautiful, we'd have a genocidal lunatic on our hands. As is turned out, she's only a probable serial killer. She could be one of the most flat out evil villains to be in a children's movie. She kills people prettier than her, demands the heart of Snow White, and mocks the dead and dying. (presumably she placed a pitcher of water just out of reach of the skeleton in the dungeon only to return after his death the kick the pitcher into his face.) What. A. Psycho. Also, her old woman disguise is the stuff nightmares have nightmares about.

There is some seriously dark imagery in this movie. My favorite is Snow White's panic attack after the huntsman tries to kill her. She's so traumatized that she mistakes a twig catching her cloak for the trees coming alive. We're then treated to a montage of trees coming to life and terrorizing this poor girl. It's wonderfully creepy, and a nice change of pace after the slow opening scene.

The Dwarves steal the show though. Each one is drawn with such specificity that you are sucked right into their world, and you begin to love Snow White because they do. They are the heart and soul of the movie. Dopey has the best visual gags, but Grumpy is the most realistic of them all. His grumpiness is grandfatherly; he's got a complaint about everything, but he's smart and you can tell that he probably cares the deepest. Look at who he had to live with. If you live with those 6 guys, you'd get grumpy too. Snow White bringing a little order and praticality into his world is the best thing that ever happened to him, which is why her poisoning affects him the deepest.

The movie is much better than I remembered it, but it does seem to drag in places, then rushes to the end as fast as possible. You also have lengthy text with no voiceover in the beginning and end of the movie. Starting with Disney's next movie, a character or narrator would speak the prologue. It's a good change. For the first full-length animated movie, the animation is brilliant. It's not a perfect movie, but It's a solid movie and deserving of it's reputation as a masterpiece.

8/10