Mirror Mirror Looks Great, Feels Flat

The latest retelling of Snow White (before June's Snow White and the Huntsman) is a lot like its vain queen: visually stunning, but kind of shallow. Critics aren't particularly impressed with Mirror Mirror:

• Though director Tarsem Singh "knows how to make performers and sets look good, he has trouble putting them into vibrant, kinetic, meaningful play," notes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. That "effectively means that he’s a better window dresser than a movie director."

• In the Toronto Star, Linda Barnard agrees. "Everything about Mirror Mirror echoes old-school animation and the entire thing is gorgeous," she notes. It's "a pretty, spun-sugar confection, airy as a plate of Easter egg-colored macarons and similarly devoid of substance."
• The script doesn't hold up to the visuals, writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "The dialogue is rather flat, the movie sort of boring," he notes. It's "a listless tale that moves at a stately pace through settings that could have supported fireworks."
• In the Los Angeles Times, however, Sheri Linden sees a lot to like. "The fable zings along on the sharp comic timing of the cast, led by a royally wicked Julia Roberts" as the queen. It's "a fractured fairy tale that occupies the divide between Disney and Grimm."

(More Snow White stories.)