*Mirror Mirror* - Why Did the Reviewers Hate It?

Mirror Mirror (2012) turns out to be:

adult
historical fantasy, though with contemporary political reference
comic
an extravaganza of set and costume - vividly, deliberately artificial in the way it's vaguely time period of the 18th century ancien régime was

based on the Grimm fairytale of Snow White.

The film stars Julia Roberts as the EviLe Queen.  Roberts displays a sense of comic line delivery and facial expression that turns on a dime.

Snow White is played by Lily Collins, a young actress of whom I know nothing, but somehow, at least in this film, reminded me of a very young Morena Baccarini (Firefly) as well as Lucia Micarelli, the charming violinist on HBO Treme. She's a sharp in her role as is Julia Roberts, but she's got further to go than Roberts, whose character begins as psycho and obtuse, and only has to lose it to greater degree as the story goes on.  Collins needs to be an anxious, oppressed mouse who becomes the rescuer of her kingdom

Of course Snow White needs some help in her transformation, and that is provided by the seven dwarfs, who were expelled from their village and occupations by the EviLe Queen because they were -- get this! unattrractive in her sight!  Unlike another Snow White film this year, we see Snow White train and develop her martial skills as well as other ones, though in scenes that are intentionally comic.  This training includes Prince Charming, who crows about how often he's spanked her in their sparring sessions.  She fixes that, thank you.  And she rescues him more than once.

Everything about this film is fun, a joy to look at, while avoiding dumb and dumber.  It's always fast to the point of every scene.  It's an action film too, though the landscapes are as artificial the backdrops in King Louis Whichever Number's private theater -- as then, in this film too, the overt artifice is part of the audience's viewing pleasure.

So why was this film's box office then disappointing?  Is it because it really isn't for children or maybe even adolescents, or even adults who don't recognize the historical and cultural reference points?  One would think though even not so historically oriented girls would enjoy this film because it's as up-to-date with a strong young young woman at the center of the tale as you could desire.


All this and the film captures that effortless sense of lightness that we find commonly in French creations from ballet to Dumas. The French have a term for it, a word that entered the language with the development of the French ballet in the eighteenth century, and from there entered the ideal of individual presentation of those inhabiting the French court:

ballon: "The ability of a dancer to jump easily and lightly into the air. Ballon is the appearance of being weightless, or defying gravity."

We seldom see this particular mode here, though back in the day the best of the screwball comedies and the dance films of Fred and Ginger demonstrate the quality perfectly, uniting the comic and elegant movement/action and crackling repartee and fast-firing plot under the same umbrella. -- just like Dumas did in his Musketeers novels