The film opens with a narration from the very beautiful but wicked enchantress, Clementianna, who insists that it is her story: she had married the widower king, who one day left to fight a great evil that had invaded the land, but he never returned. Clementianna becomes queen and rules in his absence, while confining her young stepdaughter, Princess Snow White, to the palace.
Ten years later, Snow White is now a young woman, who desires to explore the kingdom. She decides to sneak out. Walking through the forest, she meets the visiting Prince Andrew Alcott of Valencia, who has been robbed by a band of dwarfs; she and the prince are instantly smitten with each other. Snow White arrives in the town, and finds the townspeople are destitute due to Clementianna's heavy taxation.
Meanwhile, Clementianna is introduced to Alcott, is also smitten and decides to marry him for his wealth to solve the kingdom's financial troubles. She throws a ball to woo him. Unbeknownst to her, Snow White secretly attends, planning to ask Alcott to help her regain her throne and restore the kingdom. Clementianna notices her and Alcott dancing and orders her manservant, Brighton, to take the princess into the forest and feed her to the Beast.
Snow White is left in the forest and manages to run away from the Beast, before collapsing at the dwarfs' hideout. The dwarfs take her in, and introduce themselves as Grimm, Butcher, Wolf, Napoleon, Half Pint, Grub, and Chuck. When Brighton collects more taxes levied by the queen to pay for her expensive parties, the dwarfs rob him. Snow White takes the money and returns it to the townspeople, crediting the dwarfs, whom the people hail as heroes.
Clementianna informs Alcott that Snow White is dead. When he hears the bandits have robbed Brighton, he goes after them. In the forest, he discovers that Snow White is alive and in league with the dwarfs, who have trained her in combat. Both believing each other to be in the wrong, Snow White and Alcott duel. He returns to the palace, defeated, and informs Clementianna that Snow White was the dwarfs leader and is alive.
Clementianna enters her Mirror House to consult her reflection, the Mirror Queen. She has her temporarily turn Brighton into a cockroach, and requests a love potion to make Alcott fall in love with her. It turns out to be a 'puppy love' potion, and Alcott becomes devoted to her like a puppy. Under this potion, he agrees to marry her. Using dark magic, the queen attacks Snow White and the dwarfs with two giant marionettes, but Snow White defeats them by cutting their strings.
On the day of her wedding, Clementianna arrives to find that Snow White and the dwarfs have raided the party and abducted Alcott. For her inability to handle bandits and for lying about Snow White's death, the aristocrats demand for the queen be deposed. Back in the forest, Snow White breaks the spell on Alcott with true love's kiss.
Snow White encounters Clementianna, who sends the Beast after her. It manages to catch her, but it hesitates in killing her. Snow White sees the Beast wears a necklace with a moon charm on it similar to Clementianna's. She cuts the necklace off, breaking Clementianna’s spell, and restoring the Beast to its true form: Snow White’s father. Clementianna then ages rapidly, and the Mirror Queen explains that this is the price for using dark magic.
Grateful to Alcott for his assistance, the king agrees to let him marry Snow White. At their wedding, an old hag appears and offers Snow White an apple as a wedding gift. Snow White accepts it and is about to bite it, but then realizes the hag is Clementianna. She cuts a piece from the apple with her father's dagger and hands it to her. Clementianna accepts defeat, takes the apple, and disappears.
The Mirror Queen affirms it was Snow White's story after all before the Mirror House shatters. Snow White, Prince Alcott, the King and the dwarfs live happily ever after.
Armie Hammer as Andrew Alcott, the Prince of Valencia.
Nathan Lane as Brighton, the Queen's executive bootlicker.
Mare Winningham as Margaret, the royal 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.
Other cast members include Robert Emms as Charles Renbock, Prince Alcott's faithful valet and confidant; Danny Woodburn as Will Grimm, the leader of the Seven Dwarfs named after the Brothers Grimm; Martin Klebba as Butcher, a dwarf who used to work as a butcher; Mark Povinelli as Half Pint, a dwarf who has a crush on Snow White; Jordan Prentice as Napoleon, a dwarf who wears a hat similar to Napoleon's; Sebastian Saraceno as Wolf, a dwarf in a wolf-skin cape; Joey Gnoffo as Grub, a dwarf who is always eating; Ronald Lee Clark as Chuckles, a dwarf who chuckles a lot; Lisa Roberts Gillan as Mirror Queen, the reflection of Queen Clementianna who is much wiser, kinder, and somewhat younger than her; Frank Welker as the voice of the Beast, a chimeric creature with a lion-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; Alex Ivanovici as the town's magistrate that collects the taxes for Brighton.[citation needed]
Production
Development
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.[5] 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.[6] Collins was eventually cast in the role.[7] Collins said in an interview that her casting happened in 24 hours after she met Tarsem Singh and read for him.[8] 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.
Filming
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. 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.[12]
Release
The film was released in theaters on March 30, 2012.[13]
Reception
The film received generally mixed reviews. Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 49% with an average score of 5.60/10 based on reviews from 198 critics. 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."[14] 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".[15]
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."[16]
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.[17] For its opening weekend, the film earned $18.1 million while holding onto the No. 3 spot at the box office.[18] During its theatrical run, Mirror Mirror grossed $64.9 million in North America and $118.1 million internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $183 million.[1]
The song "I Believe in Love" was originally written in 1970 by Nina Hart, a singer-song writer and stage and TV actress (then working at New York City music-publishing company, Golden Bough Productions.) The song was one of several written by Hart for director Miloš Forman to consider for his film Taking Off. She performed the song in Forman's film, playing a character at an audition; Hart's recording was a hit in Italy and was later covered by Iranian singer Googoosh. Tarsem Singh—who was unaware that it had previously been used in a film—chose the song for the Bollywood-style musical finale of Mirror Mirror because his daughter had enjoyed the song when he had played it for her the previous year.[24]
I Believe In Love (Mirror Mirror Mix) – Performed by Lily Collins
