Lily Is The Fairest Of Them All

The Cell director might very well be the most striking visualist working in modern cinema since Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam came onto the scene, but his grasp on storytelling still needs work. Following his striking work on Immortals late last year, Tarsem is back with Mirror Mirror, a reworking of the Brothers Grimm story Snow White with rather mixed results.

As expected the film is magnificent to look at (it has that stagy/theatre feel) and is the antithesis of Immortals being bright, colourful and family friendly, but the director never quite nails the tone while the writers fail to get anywhere near the level of wit required. Mirror Mirror is a light, breezy and whimsical pantomime…and that perfectly fine. But what it’s aiming for is a blend of an old fashioned Disney romp and the contemporary irreverence of Tangled, and while it succeeds at the former it dramatically misses the mark with the latter.

Julia Roberts hogs the screen as the Evil Queen, Armie Hammer is an adequate Prince Charming, the impossibly cute Lily Collins is perfectly cast as the doe eyed, softly spoken heroine Snow White (although she lacks depth as an actress) and Nathan Lane is left alone to ‘get‘ what‘s required of the story. Beautiful looking but irredeemably witless, Mirror Mirror feels overlong at 95 minutes long.