It is super difficult to find a really good movie these days. One that you don't mind watching back to back in one day. This past weekend we found one! It was the perfect show for everyone.
Mirror Mirror is a 3-D take on the ever one dimensional tale of Snow White. 
Even as just a fable, all the characters in Snow White have been depicted for centuries as so blank and pale, as if everyone should be called Snow White a.k.a. boring! Even with the magic nuance of animation and some quirky songs, Disney fell short. The only great lessons from the Grimm Brothers tale is that beauty can be deadly and jealousy is sure to get you killed.
Thus, it was with great surprise that we encountered Mirror Mirror. I pretty much picked it out because I am entertained by most of Julia Roberts' acting and it would be a familiar story for the kids as well as having heard good reviews on the costuming. Little did I know that each character not only was real, but also relatable! Even the prince, who most often gets left out in these princess tales, had a full character arch that made you like him even more (not to mention that Armie Hammer is really a good actor: when you first meet him he is easily taken for the pretty face but as soon as he is under the puppy love potion - ah! genius).
The costuming WAS amazing. They even made camo look elegant on dwarfs. Details, people, details. Everything about each dress was made perfectly! Hair design on the queen and Snow was a little lacking, but it a way it worked really well in making them still be very real.
Plot line was well done. I appreciated that they did not try to deviate too far from the storyline- the queen is evil, the prince falls in love with Snow, Snow is almost killed but then finds the dwarfs. Yet, the changed a bit of the chronology of the basics to make a more living picture of how things work (although they keep the fantasy timing of merely weeks as an overall timeline yet make it seem like more time because of the fliming sequencing ex: Snow learns to be a bandit in basically one day in the story chronology, but the sequencing makes it seem like it took much longer which both ought to be true). The lines were extremely witty, not just funny, but witty. They played on all the common fairy tale lines in such a way that they were comical. Happily, because of the wit, you didn't feel that they were trying to modernize the tale.
Ah, and as the best part - morals! The tale turns to moral lesson; from story to sermon oh so gracefully. Pefectly, it isn't an overall moral, but a lesson learned in the arc of each character. The queen learns something, Snow learns something, the dwarfs learn something, the prince learns something. It's really lovely. We watched it 3 times in two days and I appreciated it every time. Still thinking about it in fact.
