'Mirror Mirror' is anything but Grimm ✭✭✭ This fairy tale princess holds her own in a lively 'Snow White' reiteration (CHICAGO TRIBUNE)

By Sheri Linden,
Special to Tribune Newspapers
March 30, 2012

Encased in a coffin, waiting to be brought back to life: That's how Snow White spends a good portion of the folk story that bears her name. There's no such downtime for the princess in the snappy retelling"Mirror Mirror," a fractured fairy tale that occupies the divide between Disney and Grimm.

A booster shot of testosterone lends kinetic kick to director Tarsem Singh's visually inventive interpretation, without shortchanging the requisite froufrou or sugarcoating the story's dark Oedipal heart. The mashup can be choppy, but the fable zings along on the sharp comic timing of the cast, led by a royally wicked Julia Roberts. 

The screenplay by Marc Klein and Jason Keller (a screen story credit goes to Melisa Wallack) pointedly rewrites the fairy tale convention that finds every damsel helplessly imperiled until a prince delivers her from danger. This Snow White (voiced by Lily Collins) can get gussied up with the best of them, but she also holds her own in a fencing duel. And — hello, switcheroo — she rescues a prince in distress.

When in exile, Snow (it's a first-name-informal kingdom) receives martial-arts instruction from the dwarfs. Like the famous septet from Disney's 1937 classic, this woods-dwelling crew provides sidekick slapstick, and each has a character-defining shtick — most memorably the love-struck Half Pint (Mark Povinelli). But they've also been restored to their folk tale roots as bandits and outcasts. They're action anti-heroes with hearts of gold.

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