Movie Review: A Snow White Christmas

Stars: 2 out of 5

Pros: Moments I enjoyed

Cons: Too rushed to truly invest

The Bottom Line:

Christmas Snow White twist

Too rushed to be developed

So not worth watching

Painful Christmas Twist on Snow White

Last December, I discovered a pair of movies giving a Christmas twist to two classic fairy tales.  After enjoying A Cinderella Christmas, I was hopeful for A Snow White Christmas.  Sadly, it left me grumpy.

Bianca Snow (Michelle Randolph) just wants to run her late father's candy store, which specializes in candy apples.  Sadly, her step-mother Victoria (Carolyn Hennesy) is interested in getting her hands on all of her departed husband's money, and that includes Bianca's share.  Okay, so Bianca was left the larger portion of his estate, but still, Victoria wants it all.  And she can get it, too, if she can keep Bianca from claiming it on her twenty-fifth birthday, which just happens to be Christmas Day.

Victoria hatches a dastardly plot to keep Bianca away, an improvisation when Bianca starts to fall for Luscas Prince (Colt Prattes), a rich local young man.  Bianca finds herself at an inn being run by a band with seven members and no memory of who she really is.  Will she make it home before the deadline?  Or will Victoria's plan succeed?

The Snow White elements are very strong in this movie, obviously, and as a fan of fairytales, I had to smile about that.  Unfortunately, finding those nuggets was one of the few things I enjoyed about the movie.  There was too much plot for the film, and the characters got sacrificed as a result.  Even worse, it didn't give us time to truly get invested in the romance.  Yes, there is a romance.  This is the Snow White fairytale, after all.  The thing is, I wanted to get invested in that part of the story.  The lack of time became painfully obvious at the end where Bianca went from angry to forgiving of the hero in the space of a scene.  (Honestly, I don't think she had much to be angry at him over, but it was still painful to watch.)

Fortunately, we really only get to know a couple of the dwarves, I mean band members.  There was so much going on that if all of them played large parts in the story, it wouldn't have worked at all.  Then again, most characters really only had one or two notes.  No, I wasn't expecting fully blown characters from a cheesy little made for TV movie, but a little more depth would have been nice.

The leads do a good job, and they helped keep me involved in the story.  Oh, there's still some cheese, but I was expecting that, so I didn't mind.  A few of the actors were aiming for campy, and they don’t quite pull it off, unfortunately.

I was happy when we reached the end of A Snow White Christmas.  Yes, a few elements were fun, but overall, this movie was disappointing.