Roberts obviously had a ball playing the Evil Queen. Dressed in sumptuous, over-the-top gowns and spewing incessantly cruel comments, she's the kind of deliciously evil villain audiences love to hate. Her vanity and self-aggrandizing comments provide some of the movie's biggest laughs -- especially as she attempts to woo the much younger Prince Alcott. The Academy Award winner is funny and charming, even as she's hateful and uncaring. Snow White, on the other hand -- or, more specifically, ingenue Collins -- is quite the opposite. Instead of being adorably innocent like Amy Adams or Anne Hathaway, Collins is beautiful but boring.
Hammer, who was excellent in The Social Network, was born to play handsome princes. He's all broad shoulders, twinkly eyes, and gleaming teeth, but even he can't elicit much chemistry with Collins. To say their romance is underwhelming is an understatement. The only redeeming scene is when the two have a brief sword fight with some zippy dialogue. Otherwise, it's really the queen and the prince who have better rapport. And as for the dwarfs, they're probably the coolest part of the movie, because they're nothing like you'd expect. They're rogueish stick-up artists who've been forced out of the village to live on their own in the woods. They teach Snow White how to be more assertive and confident, and she encourages them to stop their thievery. This Snow White is dazzling to watch from an art direction and costume perspective (with the bonus Roberts' villainy), but the princess' personality is as flat as her skin color is fair.
