Mirror Mirror (film)

Mirror Mirror
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Tarsem Singh
Produced by	Ryan Kavanaugh Bernie Goldmann Brett Ratner Kevin Misher
Screenplay by	Marc Klein Jason Keller
Story by	Melisa Wallack
Based on	Snow White by the Brothers Grimm
Starring	Lily Collins Julia Roberts Armie Hammer Nathan Lane Mare Winningham Michael Lerner Sean Bean
Music by	Alan Menken
Cinematography	Brendan Galvin
Edited by	Robert Duffy Nick Moore
Production company	Relativity Media Yucaipa Films Goldmann Pictures Rat Entertainment Misha Films Mel's Cite du Cinema Misher Films
Distributed by	Relativity Media
Release dates	March 30, 2012 (2012-03-30)
Running time	106 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$85 million[1]
Box office	$183 million[1]

Mirror Mirror is a 2012 American family adventure fantasy film based on the fairy tale "Snow White" collected by the Brothers Grimm. It is directed by Tarsem Singh, produced by Ryan Kavanaugh, Bernie Goldmann, Brett Ratner and Kevin Misher, written by Marc Klein and Jason Keller with music by Alan Menken and stars Lily Collins, Julia Roberts, Armie Hammer, Nathan Lane, Mare Winningham, Michael Lerner, and Sean Bean.^[2] It was released theatrically on March 30, 2012 by Relativity Media.

The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design. The film received generally mixed reviews from critics and it earned $183 million^[1] on a $85 million^[1] budget. Mirror Mirror was released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 26, 2012 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.^[3]

Plot

The First and Good Queen, Snow White's mother died in child birth, and her father the King (Sean Bean) marries once again with an evil and powerful sorceress named Clementianna (Julia Roberts), the most beautiful woman in the land and raises Snow White. One day, the king leaves to fight a great evil that has invaded the land but never returns. Queen Clementianna rules in his absence and keeps Snow White in the palace.

Ten years later, Snow White (Lily Collins) having turned eighteen years old, desires to see her kingdom. Defying Queen Clementianna's orders, she leaves the palace. Arriving at a forest, she meets Prince Andrew Alcott (Armie Hammer) who has been robbed by thieving dwarves. She and the Prince are drawn to each other, but go their separate ways. Snow White arrives in the town, and finds the once-happy town folk are destitute due to Queen Clementianna's greed which she tells her baker friend Margaret (Mare Winningham).

Meanwhile, Prince Alcott finds his way to the palace. Queen Clementianna realizes he comes from a wealthy kingdom and throws a ball to woo the Prince to solve her financial problems and to avoid a suggestion to marry the Baron (Michael Lerner). Snow White secretly attends the ball, planning to ask the prince to help her restore the kingdom. Queen Clementianna notices them dancing and orders her manservant Brighton (Nathan Lane) to take the princess into the forest and feed her to the Beast that lives there. Brighton takes Snow White to the forest, but he releases her and urges her to run. Snow White flees the Beast and collapses at the door to the Seven Dwarves' house. She wakes up to find the dwarves Grimm (Danny Woodburn), Butcher (Martin Klebba), Wolf (Sebastian Saraceno), Napoleon (Jordan Prentice), Half Pint (Mark Povinelli), Grub (Joe Gnoffo), and Chuck (Ronald Lee Clark).

Queen Clementianna levies another tax among the starving people to pay for the parties she throws for Prince Alcott. Brighton collects the taxes, but, on the way back to the palace, the dwarves rob Brighton and steal the money. Snow White sneaks away to return the money. The townspeople and the Town Magistrate (Alex Ivanovici) are overjoyed to have their money back and Snow White lets the Dwarves take credit for it, earning them the people's acceptance and gratitude.

Meanwhile, Queen Clementianna informs Alcott that Snow White is dead. When the Prince finds out that the bandits have robbed Brighton, he goes after them, unaware of the awful things the Queen has done. In the forest, Alcott discovers that Snow White is alive and in league with the bandits. Each believing the other to be in the wrong, Snow White and Alcott duel. Alcott returns to the Palace defeated and informs the Queen that Snow White is alive.

Queen Clementianna goes to her Mirror House, within which lives her reflection, the Mirror Queen (Lisa Roberts Gillan). Displeased that Brighton had lied about Snow White's death, Queen Clementianna has the Mirror Queen temporarily turn Brighton into a cockroach. The Queen requests a love potion so she can make the Prince fall in love with her. The Mirror Queen repeatedly warns Queen Clementianna that there is a price for using dark magic, but Queen Clementianna refuses to listen. The potion, however, turns out to be a 'puppy love' potion and the Prince becomes devoted to her like a puppy dog. Under this spell, the Prince agrees to marry Queen Clementianna. She then uses dark magic to create two giant wooden puppets in the forest and uses them to try and kill Snow White and the Dwarves. Snow White is able to cut the strings of the puppets and break the spell.

Snow White and the Dwarves crash the royal wedding and capture the Prince before Queen Clementianna and Brighton arrive. When Queen Clementianna arrives, the Baron and the other Aristocrats had their clothes stolen, because of her unable to handle bandits and for lying about Snow White's death, they demanded that Clementianna be deposed. Back in the forest, the still-cursed Prince wishes to return to the Queen. Snow White kisses Alcott and the spell is broken.

Snow White encounters Queen Clementianna who reveals that she can control the Beast (Frank Welker) that has been plaguing the forest and sends it after Snow White. Prince Alcott tries to save Snow White, and after the struggle, the Beast captures the princess. However, the Beast hesitates in killing her and Snow White sees that it wears a necklace with a moon charm on it similar to the one the Queen wears. She cuts the chain with her father's dagger and the Beast suddenly becomes engulfed in light. Queen Clementianna begins to age, and the Mirror Queen says this is her consequence for using dark magic. The Beast turns out to be Snow White's father, who has no memory of the last ten years.

Grateful to Alcott for his assistance, the king agrees to let him marry Snow White as Brighton starts a relationship with Margaret. After Snow White accepts the Magistrate's gift, a crone in a hooded robe appears and offers Snow White an apple as a wedding gift. At first, Snow White accepts the gift. As she is about to bite it, she realizes that the crone is Queen Clementianna. Snow White pulls out her knife and cuts a piece from the apple and gives it to Queen Clementianna, saying that sometimes you must admit that you've been defeated. Accepting defeat, Queen Clementianna takes the apple piece as the Mirror House shatters upon the Mirror Queen declaring that it was Snow White's story all along.

The film's epilogue reveals what happened to the Dwarves: Grimm becomes a teacher again and writes a book of fairy tales, Napoleon becomes a hairdresser, Wolf "returned to his pack," Half-Pint finds a girlfriend, Butcher becomes a flyweight champion, Chuck joins the royal circus, and Grub continues to eat. Now they can live happily ever after just like any other fairytale.

During the credits, the cast, led by Snow White, engage in a Bollywood-style musical number.

Cast

• Lily Collins as Snow White
• Julia Roberts as Queen Clementianna, Snow White's evil stepmother.
• Armie Hammer as the Prince Andrew Alcott, the prince of a distant kingdom.
• Nathan Lane as Brighton, the Queen's executive bootlicker.
• Mare Winningham as Margaret, a baker who was Snow White's friend since childhood.
• Michael Lerner as the Baron, an elite member of the kingdom who is often recommended for Queen Clementianna to get engaged to.
• Sean Bean as the King, the father of Snow White, who went missing.
• Danny Woodburn as Grimm, the leader of the Seven Dwarfs. He is named after the Brothers Grimm.
• Martin Klebba as Butcher, a dwarf who used to work as a butcher.
• Sebastian Saraceno as Wolf, a dwarf in a wolf-skin cape.
• Jordan Prentice as Napoleon, a dwarf who wears a hat similar to Napoleon's.
• Mark Povinelli as Half Pint, a dwarf who has a crush on Snow White.
• Joe Gnoffo as Grub, a dwarf who is always eating.
• Ronald Lee Clark as Chuckles, a dwarf who chuckles a lot.
• Lisa Roberts Gillan as the Mirror Queen, the reflection of Queen Clementianna who is much wiser, kinder, and somewhat younger than her.
• Robert Emms as Charles Renbock, Prince Alcott's faithful valet and confidant.
• Alex Ivanovici as the Town Magistrate
• Frank Welker as the voice of the Beast, a chimeric creature with a lion/dog-like head, the antlers of a deer, chicken leg-like arms, the wings of an eagle, and the body and tail of a snake with a tail-claw at the end of the tail.
  • Frank Welker also provides the vocal effects of the giant puppets.

Casting

Roberts was the first to be cast, because very early on Tarsem Singh wanted an Evil Queen with whom audiences could relate. He stated that in the film, the queen is not evil, but rather insecure. He also suggested that the Queen's true ugliness may be revealed at the very end of the film.^[4] Originally Saoirse Ronan was considered for the role of Snow White but the age difference between her and Armie Hammer was too large (he was 25 and she was 17). Felicity Jones was offered the part but turned it down.^[5] Collins was eventually cast in the role.^[6] Collins said in an interview that her casting happened in 24 hours after she met Tarsem Singh and read for him.^[7] Hammer was cast as the prince who is at first drawn towards the Queen and then towards Snow White. He beat out James McAvoy and Alex Pettyfer for the role.^[8]

Production

Filming for Mirror Mirror began on June 20, 2011 in Montreal, Quebec, under the working title Untitled Snow White Project.^[9] Production on the film wrapped in mid-September.^[10] The film was officially titled Mirror Mirror on November 4, 2011. The first trailer was released on November 30, 2011 in partnership with Relativity Media and Trailer Park.^[11] The teaser poster was released the same day. Mirror Mirror was the last film which Tarsem's regular costume designer, Eiko Ishioka, worked on before her death. The visual effects were designed by Tom Wood and executed by Wayne Brinton, Tim Carras, Sébastien Moreau and Amanda Dyar.^[12] Relativity Media announced the movie's final cost as being $85 million, though an article in the Los Angeles Times said the true budget was closer to $100 million.^[13]

Release

The film was released March 30, 2012 in theaters.^[14]

Box office

On its opening day, Mirror Mirror made $5.8 million, coming in at the No. 3 spot behind The Hunger Games and Wrath of the Titans.^[15] For its opening weekend, the film earned $18.1 million while holding onto the No. 3 spot at the box office.^[16] During its theatrical run, Mirror Mirror grossed $64,935,167 in North America and $118,083,355 internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $183,018,522.^[1]

Reception

The film received generally mixed reviews. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports the film currently holds a rating of 49% with an average score of 5.6/10 based on 172 critic reviews. The site's general consensus is that "Like most of Tarsem Singh's films, Mirror Mirror is undeniably beautiful – but its treatment of the age-old Snow White fable lacks enough depth or originality to set it apart from the countless other adaptations of the tale."^[17] On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 reviews from film critics, it has an average score of 46 from the 34 reviews, which indicates "Mixed or average reviews".^[18] Robbie Collin from British newspaper The Telegraph gave the film four stars describing it as "an exuberantly charming fairy story that owes as much to the gnarled folk tale illustrations of Arthur Rackham as the stagey, saturated lunacy of that half-loved, half-feared East German fantasy The Singing Ringing Tree. It's a Grimm piece of work, but far from a grim one: without rehashing the seminal Disney animated version, it radiates gorgeousness and good humour with a near-nuclear intensity." Collin praised costume designer Eiko Ishioka's work, saying "every outfit in Mirror Mirror is a masterpiece". He concluded the film is "the opposite of Tim Burton's brash, chaotic, dispiritingly popular Alice in Wonderland: here, the artistry of the cast and crew leaps off the screen, not 3D computer graphics."^[19]

Home media

Mirror Mirror was released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 26, 2012 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.^[3]

Awards and nominations

Soundtrack

• I Believe In Love (Mirror Mirror Mix) – Performed by Lily Collins
• All Music – Written and composed by Alan Menken

See also

• Snow White and the Huntsman, another 2012 film based on the tale of Snow White, starring Kristen Stewart as Snow White and Charlize Theron as the Evil Queen Ravenna, Snow White's evil stepmother.

References

External links

• Official website
• Mirror Mirror at the Internet Movie Database
• Mirror Mirror at Box Office Mojo
• Mirror Mirror at Metacritic
• Mirror Mirror at Rotten Tomatoes
• Opening Sequence Animation