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I Just Love This ‘Snow White’: Please Don’t Tell Anyone!
Marc Webb’s new adaptation brings joy despite its harsh critical reception
A few nights ago, after a Snow White screening, I had to force myself not to gleefully skip up Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side. Much is overlooked on Manhattan streets, but skipping, grey-bearded, knapsacked gents in Harry-Potterish eyeware are sort of a no-no, especially since that whole Luigi Mangione incident.
So instead, fueled with exhilaration, I, for the next 23 blocks, texted nephews, nieces, great nephews and nieces, friends who were parents, former students, and two pals who had vasectomies and were thus childless, insisting they all had to run see Disney’s latest.
On arriving home, I without delay opened my much-thumbed copy of Ralph Manheim’s Grimms’ Tales for Young and Old. Why? I was wondering how modern times had tamed the Brothers Grimm’s take on “Schneewittchen”?
Well, in the primary text from the early 1800s, Snow White’s real mom died on giving birth to her, and the seven dwarfs were very neat and mined silver. In 2025, the queen hangs on awhile longer than that — for a complete song, in fact — and the dwarfs are now slobs and mine multicolored rocks.
