June Films' Profitability

‘Madagascar 3′ And ‘Magic Mike’ Lead Movie Profit Parade For June: Kagan

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Wednesday July 25, 2012 @ 4:41pm EDT

Only four of last month’s 12 major movie releases are clearly destined to be profitable according to the latest monthly tally from SNL Kagan. The research firm says that DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted should lead the pack with projected total revenues (at $783.3M) coming in 2.31 times higher than total costs (of $339.4M). Kagan forecasts each film’s revenues from all sources, except for merchandise and second-cycle TV sales. It compares that to all the expenses it can identify, except for things like distribution fees, interest, profit participations and residuals. Since Kagan can’t account for everything, it figures a film is clearly profitable if estimated revenues are at least 1.75 times estimated costs. Films with an expected revenues-to-costs ratio of at least 1.40 are considered to be in a gray areas while those below 1.40 are deemed likely unprofitable.

By that standard, Warner Bros’ Magic Mike came in second at 2.23 ($252.6M revenues to $113.5M costs), followed by Universal’s Ted at 2.20 ($439.4M to $199.4M), and Disney/Pixar’s Brave at 2.11 ($788.9M to $374.1M).

Those on the bubble are Lionsgate’s Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection at 1.57 ($91.2M to $58.3M), Fox’s Prometheus at 1.54 ($450.7M to $292.0M), and Universal’s Snow White And The Huntsman at 1.52 ($531.4M to $349.7M).


Others that look unprofitable are: Warner Bros’ Rock of Ages at 0.56 ($108.0M to $193.1M), Fox’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter at 0.55 ($95.5M to $173.5M), Disney’s People Like Us at 0.50 ($44.6M to $89.0M), Columbia Pictures’ That’s My Boy at 0.48 ($82.8M to $171.6M), and Focus Features’ Seeking A Friend For the End Of The World at 0.38 ($20.3M to $53.6M).
All told, the average ratio for the films was 1.53 which compares with 1.94 for eight films released the same month last year and 1.56 for the 11 films out in June 2010.

Snow White Review Summary

If this Snow White also underperforms -- and opening projections have been steadily moving downwards from $60M to $35 - 45M as the weekend nears -- movie writers may say the public has lost interest in fairy tales  and that the pressure will be on Disney to lure moviegoers to Oz and Maleficent.  But Disney's has true fairy tale DNA that both productions lacked.  I actually think the pressure is off especially for Angelina since the bar set by Julia Roberts (Mirror Mirror) and Charlize Theron (SWATH) is quite low.  Theron performance in particular has been criticized as being over-the-top.

And I've seen so far of Maleficent looks impressive.

Will Snow White and Battleship Be the Last Straws at Universal?

• By Claude Brodesser-Akner

Tracking poorly with audiences, the pricey Snow White and the Huntsman looks likely to be yet another in a list of painful bombs for the beleaguered Universal Pictures, coming just two weeks after Battleship got torpedoed at the box office. Over nearly three dismal years, the entrenched team of chairman Adam Fogelson and co-chairman Donna Langley has made and released such high-priced failures as The Wolfman, Green Zone, Robin Hood, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, and now Battleship, leaving one to wonder: Will Snow White be the poisoned apple that finally forces a regime change at the reeling studio?

NRG data leaked to Vulture shows that the action/adventure film is tracking particularly poorly with one group that action/adventure films cannot afford to disappoint: men. Only slightly more than one in three males (36 percent) over the age of 25 are expressing "definite interest" in seeing it. More, an internal Universal Pictures memorandum shared with Vulture shows that the studio expects a best-case opening-weekend haul to be only between $35 million and $40 million — a disastrously low number for a film that the studio admits to costing $175 million but which insiders say wound up totaling $190 million. (Add to that another $80 million to market it, and the math quickly becomes a problem: After all, it’s not what you gross, but what you keep. As half of all box office receipts must be split with theaters, you quickly realize this is a film so expensive it would need to gross roughly half a billion worldwide just to break even.) Even if it opens at No. 1, which is likely, it's not necessarily a victory.

Snow's very existence still draws slack-jawed amazement from many in Hollywood: that a first-time director (Rupert Sanders, who had worked for a decade doing commercials) was given a $150 million budget to make his first studio picture; that such a vastly expensive film could be made with a starlet who has never had a hit outside of her tween-girl-heavy franchise Twilight; and that anyone could expect 18-year-old boys to willingly buy a ticket to see a movie about Snow White — however "edgy" and "cool" she might have been tarted up to be.

And so, in the very likely occurrence that Snow fails, the financial damage might well be the final straw for an executive team that has overseen one of the worst losing streaks ever. While they were elevated to co-chairmen of the studio in October of 2009, both executives have been in senior leadership for almost a decade now: Langley became president of production in 2005, while Fogelson was named president of marketing in 2002 and president of marketing and distribution in October 2007. In the summer of 2009, the studio kicked off a three-year long cavalcade of multiple $100 million write-downs, starting with Land of the Lost. 2010 would prove even more accident-prone, with The Wolfman, Green Zone, and Robin Hood each said to have lost at least $100 million, not to mention less-expensive bombs like Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Repo Men, and Skyline.

When Comcast officially got regulatory approval to formally acquire Universal in late January 2011, it seemed as though things might be turning around: Fast Five opened huge, revving up more than $600 million worldwide, and Bridesmaids would go on to make nearly $300 million worldwide. But soon enough, the promise of spring would give way to the scorch of summer: The once-unassailable Tom Hanks lost money with Larry Crowne and the seemingly bulletproof pairing of James Bond with Indiana Jones in Cowboys and Aliens similarly started a tide of red ink that wouldn’t just not recede, but kept growing: The Thing. The Change Up. Dream House. Tower Heist. Wanderlust. Big Miracle. The Five Year Engagement.

There have been a few bright spots with moderately budgeted films like The Lorax, Contraband, and the brilliantly-marketed Safe House. But this year’s megabombs will likely erase their gains. Today Comcast CEO Brian Roberts reportedly told investors that Universal Studios' losses were responsible for dragging NBCUniversal's earnings to "flat, slightly down" this quarter: Analysts expect Universal will be forced to take a $150 million write-down on Battleship, and the way it’s currently tracking, there could be between a $75 to $100 million write-down on Snow White and the Huntsman. Add up all the disasters of the last three years, and the total loses come to a staggering billion dollars.

Someone is going to have to pay for this mess, likely with their job, and more than likely following this weekend. It’d be hard to imagine that it won’t be Langley and Fogelson. After all, shortly after Comcast took ownership of Universal last year, the pair flew to Philadelphia with a presentation for Comcast COO Steve Burke, pleading with Comcast brass not to pull the plug on Battleship, the budget of which had already been cresting $210 million. As old salts used to say, "Hold fast!" Burke let the project continue, only to see its budget reach $240 million and then sink. With Snow White looking headed for a similarly ignominious end, it's hard to believe that Burke will continue to hold fast.

Review & Round-Up: 'Snow White and The Huntsman' Wants To Be Everything It's Not

Reviews by Sophia Savage | May 31, 2012 4:15 PM

Universal was brave choosing first-time feature director Rupert Sanders for "Snow White and the Huntsman," and the result is a muddled riff that wants to be "Lord of the Rings," "Braveheart," Robin Hood," "Willow" and "Alice in Wonderland" all at once. They beat the fairytale-revival ‪piñata‬ and this is what came out.  With Charlize Theron as the evil queen and Kristen Stewart as Snow White, we hoped for something gritty (within the confines of a PG-13 studio film) that would at the very least help empower its tween and teen girl demographic, taking the fairy tale in a feminist direction. Basing an entire movie around the idea that Stewart is more beautiful and charismatic than Theron is problematic, and isn't believable for a second. Stewart was woefully miscast and given an unfairly heavy load to carry; the talent she has won't be highlighted in roles like this (or as Bella Swan in "Twilight") which continue to bury the spark we saw in her in 2007's "Into The Wild." Were Theron's Ravenna written with the depth it hints at in the beginning, audiences would likely find themselves rooting for her in the end over the lackluster Snow White, who is forced into saccharine CGI-settings with nothing to do but have a sparkle in her eye and would-be epic battle sequences that only highlight the narrative's failure to make her a believable leader to "end the darkness."
This is not a feminist take on Snow White, no matter how badly it wants to be. It tells us beauty is power, and then never successfully subverts that message because Stewart's Snow White is just the stand-in for a heroine who could actually prove otherwise. A feminist retelling requires more than a girl riding a horse with pants and a sword and ending up with a crown on her head -- here these token images read as the consolation prize for an audience that is assumed to be stupid. Chris Hemsworth as the Huntsman manages to bring what little soul there is and the Dwarfs provide a dash of diverting comic relief.  The cast does what they can given the cut-and-paste script and beautiful but overly stylized settings, but "Snow White and the Huntsman" is still a rotten apple.
Check out more reviews below:

THR: "This is a film of moments, of arresting visuals, marked seriousness, sometimes surprising imagination and with nothing on its mind, really, except to provide the conventional reassurance of installing a rightful royal on the throne. It's also a film in which you can't help but behold and compare the contrasting beauty of two of the most exceptional-looking women on the screen today, Stewart and Theron."

EW: "It's also a world-class illustration of how, in the age of the global blockbuster, the lust for demographics — for coralling the largest possible audience — can determine aesthetics. The movie works so hard to transform a quintessential girl story into a girl-and-guy story that it's like three movies in one. Theron, knowingly over-the-top, acts in a viciously charged and entertaining style,..By the end, she's supposed to be playing Snow White as Joan of Arc meets Braveheart meets Katniss Everdeen, and she's less than authentic on all fronts."

Roger Ebert: "'Snow White and the Huntsman' reinvents the legendary story in a film of astonishing beauty and imagination. It's the last thing you would expect from a picture with this title. It falters in its storytelling, because Snow White must be entirely good, the Queen must be entirely bad, and there's no room for nuance. The end is therefore predetermined. But, oh, what a ride…There is a great film here somewhere, perhaps one that allowed greater complexity for the characters. But considering that I walked in expecting no complexity at all, let alone the visual wonderments, 'Snow White and the Huntsman' is a considerable experience."

Salon: "A lot of things go wrong in 'Snow White and the Huntsman,' so many that it’s surprising the film feels as exhilarating and entertaining as it finally does. The problems start with the central premise and the leading actress, but there are also the wobbly CGI effects, uncertain character arcs and unresolved subplots, not to mention the regional British Isles accents, which may be tough for American viewers to follow,..[Stewart] badly needs to get out of the business of playing storybook virginal princess types,..this Snow White — who is sometimes Bilbo Baggins (and sometimes his Ring), sometimes Luke Skywalker, sometimes Joan of Arc and sometimes Henry V — calls for both broad hambone instincts and a natural aristocratic bearing. Stewart possesses neither, looking and acting rather too much like a standoffish American girl faking a posh accent."

Boston Globe: "Charlize Theron gives a performance that fuses astonishing costumes (from multi-Oscar winner Colleen Atwood), alarming special effects, and overacting of a degree rarely seen these days. Theron can be an actress of wit and even subtlety, but it’s hard to bring nuance to a role that requires you to bellow 'YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME!' a few scenes after emerging from an oil slick covered in crows,..After a while, you just sit back and let the thing wash over you, marveling and giggling as necessary,..[Sanders] has talent, conviction, and a knack for the arresting image; what he doesn’t have yet is any sense of how to craft a seamless two-hour narrative."

Miami Herald: "[Stewart] has a bum rap of being inexpressive and moribund as Bella in the Twilight movies. But at least she’s physically suited for that role. In Snow White and the Huntsman, this talented but woefully miscast actress is expected to rally an entire army of soldiers, even though she usually looks like she forgot the combination to her locker."

AV Club: "The greatest innovation Snow White And The Huntsman brings to its 'dark retelling' of the Snow White fairy tale is suggesting that its evil-queen antagonist (played by Charlize Theron) has a name, a past, and a purpose. And its biggest letdown comes when it abandons that idea entirely in order to turn her into yet another generic baddie, an impersonal wall of CGI special effects and grimaces for Snow White (Kristen Stewart) to throw herself against,..Huntsman feints at being the Snow White retelling no one has ever seen before, but ultimately becomes the 'been there, done that' of fairy-tale filmmaking."

Seattle Times: "In any reasonable Snow-White-vs.-the-Evil-Queen matchup, Kristen Stewart wouldn't stand a chance against Charlize Theron. I mean, really. There's Theron as the Queen, smiling in a way that would put frost on tomatoes, standing there with her regal bearing and fabulous feather-bedecked outfits and slightly contemptuous gaze (conveying "I might kill you, but I might be too bored. Let me decide"). And then there's, well, Bella Swan in a corset. It's not a fair fight, and I suspect the makers of 'Snow White and the Huntsman' know it, but apparently you can't mess with the endings of fairy tales,..[It] left me wishing that Queen Ravenna would head off on a motorcycle with Lisbeth Salander and raise some hell — now that would be a movie.

ThePlaylist: "When discussing how powerful males use women and then cast them aside when they reach a certain age, [Ravenna] might as well be describing Hollywood's hiring process,..[It] is often a visually gorgeous movie, at times genuinely jaw-dropping, but the rest of the film is totally drab,..It's a movie made for children that is often shockingly dark and violent, but at the same time probably too frivolous for adults."

Slant: "Much detail is lavished on the medieval setting, a mud-and-shit-everywhere nightmare that could have easily been imagined by the makers of Game of Thrones,..is it destiny that truly empowers the girl or narrative convenience and expediency?...As feminist fantasy, the film is non-committal, and as a reimagining of the fairy tale, it's at best expensive-looking without seeming wantonly so."

Variety: "Handsome but hollow,..The cast does what it can -- especially Theron, whose frequent fits add 'drama' and 'raging' to her regal title -- but can't overcome a degree of flatness to the middle section or lack of consistent excitement at the end. Nor does Hemsworth's roguish charm come across as effortlessly as it did in 'Thor'...The movie and its villain share a common bond: Conjuring a touch of magic is one thing, but sustaining great helpings of it is something else entirely."
 

Disney Halts 'Order of the Seven' (Snow White derivative)

MAY 22

Disney Halts Big-Budget 'Order of the Seven' Movie (Exclusive)

The move over budget concerns comes as the Asia-set adventure movie was gearing up to begin production.

4:48 PM PDT 5/22/2012 by Borys Kit

Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

Saoirse Ronan

Disney has put Order of the Seven, its planned Asia-set adventure movie, on hold indefinitely.
Saoirse Ronan was set to star and Michael Gracey was to make his directorial debut on the project, which has been in development at the studio for more than a decade and was, according to several sources, hoping to start production as soon as this summer in London.
The project, which began life as a Snow White retelling, was in the midst of finding an international cast to play a band of warriors tasked with protecting a young woman. And even as late as last week, the studio hired Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (Iron Man) to polish the script.


But now sources at Disney say that all development work is being stopped. That's an abrupt about-face, even though the project was not officially greenlighted and the studio had not set a release date. Seven was in preproduction and expected to go before the cameras this year. 
Sources say that in the aftermath of the mega-budgeted John Carter failing at the box office in March, Disney has been scrutinizing budgets on its tentpole movies. The budget on Seven, while undisclosed, was high enough to give the studio pause. Having a first-time director involved contributed to the unease.
Also adding to the uncertainty is the lack of a studio head. Rich Ross, who was overseeing development of Seven, resigned as studio chief in April after Disney announced it would suffer a $200 million write-down on John Carter. Disney CEO Bob Iger has not named a replacement for Ross.


Order of the Seven initially was set up by producer Andrew Gunn as a live-action kung fu take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but later evolved into a fantasy-action adventure tale. The story centered on a young woman in 19th century Hong Kong who escapes her wicked stepmother and takes refuge with seven men belonging to an ancient order dedicated to fighting demons and dragons.
This isn’t the first time Disney has put the brakes on a project over budget concerns. Last year the studio reined in the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced The Lone Ranger, only to give it the greenlight once the cost of the adventure pic starring Johnny Depp was trimmed.
In fact, budgets are being scrutinized all over Hollywood. Earlier this year, Warner Bros. put its medieval adventure Arthur & Lancelot on hold, resurrected it and then put it on hold again. Universal last year shelved its anticipated adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, even with the involvement of Ron Howard. A ballooning budget was cited as the reason.
Email: Borys.Kit@thr.com
Twitter: @Borys_Kit

Mirror, Mirror & Julia: The Good & The Bad

'Mirror Mirror' Early Review and Round-Up: Leave Princess Fairy Tales to Disney

Reviews by Anne Thompson | March 29, 2012 3:09 PM |

"Mirror Mirror" means a lot to producer/distributor Relativity Media, which needs hits in order to survive. That's why the $60-million PG flick is aimed so squarely at a mainstream family audience. Visually, it looks like a movie directed by Tarsem Singh ("The Immortals"), but it doesn't feel like one. The movie will play young. Very young.
For one thing, Singh is relying on an all-too familiar Grimm fairy tale (reworked by Marc Klein and Jason Keller), which is at best fitfully amusing, thanks to Julia Roberts (who literally has bee-sting lips), Nathan Lane and the Seven Dwarfs, and most of the time, makes you wish you were watching "Tangled" instead. This princess stuff is Disney turf. No one does it better.
While the producers did hire Disney composer Alan Menken to write the score, it's uninspired and treacly. This is yet another case where live actors mixed with clever VFX (the dwarves run, leap and fly on cool accordion stilts) don't come close to giving us that soaring Disney magic. Some of the animation fakery (the gorgeous opening intro, the evil Queen's ageless mirror) works better than the rest of the movie, which just feels fake. "Mirror Mirror" has no new take on this story (didn't the Red Queen already play live chess in "Alice in Wonderland"?), and veers from irritating to dull.
Lily Collins' Snow White is a doltish drip; we don't believe that Armie Hammer's handsome buffoon of a Prince Charming is in love with her (remarkably, Hammer survives this movie), nor the Seven Dwarfs for that matter. The Queen's feelings toward her step-daughter almost make sense. Why is the gang of seven thieves teaching her to fight and rob? So she can be slightly more acceptable to a modern audience? In one scene she clashes swords, pitifully, with the Prince. It's unbelievable. (The Playlist interviewed Collins and Hammer here.)
The tone veers all over the place. The best thing in the movie is the Bollywood closing number, which holds a clue to the kind of daring the movie lacks. Singh has plans to take a very different direction on his next, "Eye In the Sky." Who can blame him? While the often incoherent filmmaker has always favored style over content in the past, he was never this insipid.
A smattering of reviews is below.
Roger Ebert:
"'Mirror Mirror' is a sumptuous fantasy for the eyes and a pinball game for the mind, as story elements collide and roll around bumping into each other,..It's almost uncanny in some scenes here, how Lily Collins (daughter of Phil Collins) looks like Audrey Hepburn,..She's all sweet, all innocent, but Julia Roberts steals the show with her imperious and autocratic Queen. All of this is in place and looks great, but the dialogue is rather flat, the movie sort of boring, and there's not much energy in the two places it should really be felt: Between the Queen and Snow White, and between Snow and the Prince. The story is a listless tale that moves at a stately pace through settings that could have supported fireworks."
Variety:
"Poised between revisionist fairy tale and smirking sendup, this gaudy, over-frosted cream puff of a movie half-heartedly positions its famous heroine as a dagger-wielding proto-feminist, yet ultimately suffers the same fatal flaw as Julia Roberts' evil queen: It doesn't really care about anything except how pretty it looks."
Christy Lemire:
"Julia Roberts chews up the scenery and spits it back out again with great brio in her first truly villainous role as the evil Queen in 'Mirror Mirror.' And oh, what scenery it is,..Basically, the scenery IS the movie,..Collins has a lovely screen presence — she's got this young Audrey Hepburn thing going — but she lacks a certain oomph, even after her character has learned to fight and supposedly found her inner strength. Roberts rules her at every turn, even when she flashes that iconic smile in cruel fashion. She seems to be reveling in playing a role that's such a departure; that sense of joy only sporadically finds its way to the rest of the film."
Roger Moore:
"If only they'd put more 'Heigh Ho' into the script, found more funny things for Nathan Lane (the queen's aide) to say and do. If only Roberts had had the guts to play mean (This is an image-obsessed movie star pulling her punches.). If only they'd found a Snow White with some spark to her. 'Mirror Mirror' leaves us with those 'if onlys,' and reminds us that the original incantation missed the big point. Casting 'the fairest of them all' can't save you from a heroine as dull as her character's name."
TheWrap:
"Somewhere between the pitch meeting and the movie's opening, this sadly earthbound fairy tale lost its happy ending. 'Mirror Mirror' is minor minor,..Part of 'Mirror’'s problem is that the screenplay, credited to two writers and with a third getting a story credit, is all over the place. At times, it seems that the movie is a satire about anxiety over aging, as the Queen frets over who’s the fairest in the land. But it also hints at a political agenda, as when the villagers are told that the onerous taxes collected by the Queen are being used to keep them safe, and at being about feminism, as when Snow White and the Prince battle for the upper hand while bickering or crossing swords."

Media & Entertainment

|

Roger Friedman, Contributor

3/30/2012 @ 12:27PM |182 views

"Mirror Mirror": Julia Roberts' Latest Bomb Opens Today

HOLLYWOOD, CA - MARCH 17: Actress Julia Roberts arrives at Relativity Media's 'Mirror Mirror' Los Angeles premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on March 17, 2012 in Hollywood, California. (Image credit: via @daylife)

I told you the other day about the movie “Mirror Mirror” being held from critics until the last minute. It opens today and unless a lot of children under the age of 10 see it, “Mirror Mirror” is headed to DVD and cable rather quickly. It’s scored a low 52% rating on Rotten tomatoes.com with 43 positive reviews and 40 negative. The positive ones came mostly from small bloggers. Reviewers from large news organizations were not amused. “Mirror Mirror” joins “Larry Crowne” as the second big Roberts disaster in a row. But “Eat Pray Love”-which made money–was intolerable.
Roberts is well past her glory run of films she made with partner Elaine Goldsmith Thomas in the 90s–from “Pretty Woman” and “Erin Brockovich” to “Notting Hill” and “Runaway Bride.” Those days are over. She went from being fetching and cute to brittle and self-important. She and Goldsmith-Thomas, who’d been her agent and then her producing partner, parted company long ago. Roberts also had a notorious falling out with Susan Sarandon during the making of “Step Mom.” Another recent film, “Duplicity,” was completely incoherent.
In today’s New York Times, reviewer Manohla Dargis says Roberts looks very amused with herself. Well, at least someone is. “Mirror Mirror,” which had a review embargo until last night, looks great–all sterling computer graphics–but it’s a witless, tiresome, one note joke. Roberts is completely self-aware as an actresss. Where Glenn Close was a perfect Cruella de Vil, and Meryl Streep was tantalizing in “Prada,” Roberts just keeps winking at the camera, and hamming it up. It’s a wonder she didn’t gain weight from all the scenery she chewed. Luckily, most of it wasn’t real.
Here’s a clip from a Charlie Rose interview with Roberts. FFwd it to around 4:40. I always thought it was interesting that she never credited anyone else with choosing her films or developing material during her run of hits. She thought she did it herself. And now those people are gone. “Mirror Mirror” according to Dorothy Pomerantz‘s excellent report here yesterday, cost $80 million, not including another $20 for promotion.

http://youtu.be/sGSmR1SfRb0



And in the other corner, a contrarian view from Guy Lodge.

Review: Delightful 'Mirror Mirror' restores magic to fairytale revisionism

Tarsem's latest opens in theaters today

Friday, Mar 30, 2012 9:58 AM

Guy Lodge

• Critic's Rating A-
• Readers' Rating n/a

"I bet you think you know this story. You don't -- the real one's much more gory." With this crisp opening couplet, Roald Dahl announced his imminent desanctification of the Grimm Brothers' "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," one of six done-to-death fairytales given a black-comic makeover in his 1982 bestseller "Revolting Rhymes."
Dahl's book was itself a tangy kid-lit response to Angela Carter's ingenious adult sexualization of that dusty literary canon in her essential 1979 volume "The Bloody Chamber"; working at opposite ends of the scale, both writers were making a concerted effort to reclaim these darkly symbolic stories, originally targeted to grown-ups, from their sweetened, child-oriented colonization by Disney. Bar the occasional valiant but underseen effort, however -- Neil Jordan's Carter adaptation "The Company of Wolves" among them -- it was a while before Hollywood arrived at a similarly subversive memo, particularly as Disney revived their commercial fortunes at the end of the 1980s by returning to the pages of Andersen and Perrault, their traditionalist approach interrupted only by happier endings.
By the time the theoretical spirit of Dahl had entered mainstream cinema, it had curdled most unappetizingly: the sloppy, biliously spirited 2001 smash "Shrek" earned a lot of undue credit for its alternately cynical and scatological disrespect of fairytale tropes, but the absence of any moral or ideological fiber in their place made for an increasingly vapid and joyless subgenre. (And that's before we even touch the likes of "Hoodwinked!.")
There's only so long one can titter at oh-so-naughty character names like "Farquad" before one craves a bit more perspective, a bit less guile, or both -- particularly with filmmakers like Catherine Breillat, Julia Leigh and even Darren Aronofsky playing rather more inventive, romantic, spiritually loyal games with the fairytale form, though still within the adult bracket.
It'd be a stretch of both the truth and the film's very intention to say that "Mirror Mirror," Tarsem Singh's lithe, literate, extravagantly daffy redesign of "Snow White," quite fulfils that lofty brief -- it's girlier and more good-natured than anything from the Dahl school of storytelling, for starters, though with its scattering of macabre visual gags and morally corrupt septet of dwarves, I'm willing to bet there's a dog-eared copy of "Revolting Rhymes" on the bookshelf of writer Melissa Wallack. But for all its parodic 21st-century nudges, it's also an authentic fairytale, at least three parts swoon to one part snark, unapologetically reclaiming the genre from "Shrek" levels of smugness.  
There's the merest threat of a false note in the film's opening beats, but it's a momentarily alarming one: "They called her Snow White," Julia Roberts narrates, her familiarly spiky tones tinged with creamy contempt, "because it was the most pretentious name they could come up with."
It's a reasonably smart line, one that gently announces a wink-wink postmodern perspective while still sounding more or less in character from Roberts's bored, haughty Wicked Queen. (After all, if we're likening magic-kingdom royalty to contemporary notions of celebrity, "Snow White" is just the sort of affected moniker Hollywood's great and good assign their offspring, inviting similar sneers.) But even as it got the required chuckle, this blithe intrusion of 21st-century irony sets up prickling concerns that we are, once more, pitching ourselves far above the source.
No sooner are such concerns established, however, than they are thrillingly banished by the exquisitely animated shadow-box prologue that follows. Tidily filling in the nuts and bolts of the Snow White legend for younger viewers that haven't yet made its acquaintance -- both responsible and responsive to its audience, this is the rare revisionist fairytale that doesn't take its public-domain source as a given -- with an elegantly revolving diorama of layered, stylized tableaux from multiple schools of past illustration, it's a knockout sequence in isolation. More crucially, however, it sets up the storybook meter and heightened visual fancy that are to be the cornerstones of this adaptation; even when it shifts into frenetic comic riffing, "Mirror Mirror" remains bound by its obligations to magic.
That Tarsem, the advertising-schooled oddball whose astonishing visual concepts are rarely tethered by logic or practicality, should prove such a delicious fit for the genre is hardly surprising. To various degrees, his three previous features -- "The Cell," "The Fall" and last year's swords-and-sandals-and-fetishwear spectacular "Immortals" -- have all been fairytales to one degree or another, precoccupied with parallel realms and dream coding.
After flirting (okay, fucking) with Greek mythology in his last film, the similarly entrenched universe of European folklore was an obvious follow-up destination, and it's been suitably, rewardingly Tarsem-ized: the director's singular panoply of culture-clashing motifs, his saturated blood-and-mustard palette and, of course, his enduring mask fetish are splashed liberally across Tom Foden's dazzling, CGI-brushed production design, which expands the expected Gothic spaces of past screen renditions with vast, gilded orientalism and the occasional witty flash of bare-boards theatricality.
It's hard to think of a contemporary director whose auteur credentials are represented quite so assertively by his story worlds. It harder still to imagine his future work without the similarly defining contributions of the late Eiko Ishioka, whose jaw-droppingly catholic costumes -- touching on everything from commedia dell'arte burlesque to block-colored Asian warrior wear to laser-cut Hollywood glamor, complete with a closing nod to Disney's own iconic Snow White gown -- represent a stunning sign-off to an extraordinary career; if a posthumous Oscar nod doesn't materialize, serious words need to be had with that Academy branch.
The bigger surprise, then, is that Tarsem should be so comfortable with the frisky farce that makes up much of the film's second half, its unashamed silliness cresting with a potentially disastrous, but finally riotous, sequence in which Armie Hammer's appealingly dim Prince Charming is possessed by the spirit of a slobbering puppy; the director's work has always toyed with absurdism, but never copped to it quite so openly or gleefully.
Still, to credit Tarsem's bouncy pacing and the neat emotional throughline of the script -- Roberts' narration turns on a clever literary somersault about whose story "Snow White" even is -- for keeping the soufflé from falling is to undersell the invaluable contributions of an imaginatively chosen cast, who tussle far more playfully with their helmer for control of the scenes than any remarkably attired Tarsem ensemble to date.
Roberts especially, more alert and mischievous than she's been in anything since "Erin Brockovich," is having a blast. Her gawky sweetheart charm makes her an unlikely choice for high-camp villainess duty, but her strikingly venomous line readings (in, admittedly, a touch-and-go accent) and stroppy body language swiftly prove the wisdom of casting someone who might well have played the wide-eyed princess 20 years ago: it's that much clearer why the Queen would feel personally affronted by Lily Collins' milky charms. (Further points to Roberts for being a good enough sport to undergo a black-hearted makeover scene that pokes wicked fun at her profession's own vanity.)
Roberts doesn't have it all her own way. Collins belies her wan appearance to emerge as a surprisingly game heroine; her interaction with the endearingly characterized dwarves, notably one (an excellent Martin Klebba) whose name in the 1937 Disney rendition would have to be Skeezy, gives the character spark beyond her slighty rudimentary proto-feminist assignation.
Better yet is Hammer, revealed here as a comedian of expressive elasticity and calculatedly slack timing, whose forte clearly lies in goofily undermining his immaculate WASPish hotness: "Someone get the man a light covering," a blushing, twinkly-eyed Roberts barks to an orderly as the Prince enters her court, sheepishly shirtless. It's a million miles from Angela Carter, but this subtle sexing of characters in an otherwise fluffy family petit four is a welcome sign that Tarsem's fairytales have some blood running through their veins.
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