Globoscope
Potboiler of low merit
Mirror, Mirror, begins as a bedtime story but degenerates into a contrived fairytale. It is neither saucy stuff for kids nor a timepass 

When Melisa Wallack rewrote Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Mirror, Mirror, wonder what she had in mind. Maybe, a profound imagery. But director Tarsem Singh is probably all in the dark about his intentions, and like all serious artistes added his own take on it and gave a free rein to scriptwriters Melisa and Jason Keller. What they do is quite incomprehensible. If it is meant to be a cute bedtime story, it soon degenerates into a contrived fairytale, all sugar and spice till the eventual nightmare (but the serpent is cute), that is if one braves it out till then.

May be, the whole idea was giving Pretty Woman Julia Roberts a new persona — a villain for a change. So she becomes the wicked Queen Clementianna, the stepmother of our lovely Snow White (Lily Collins) and who is obsessed by the mirror on her wall. Oh yes, she is one better than the French queen Marie Antoinette — she feeds the poor with metaphors. Actually, they should have given more scope to Baker Margaret (Mare Winningham) and man-servant Brighton (Nathan Lane). But the story limps, along with the cunning Clementianna plotting in vain and the charming Prince Andrew Alcott (Armie Hammer) of Valencia and Snow White going through secret rendezvous, all oblivious to the wicked, plotting queen. Then, out of the blue, the missing King (Sean Bean) shows up. But, by then, the fare has already descended to a pot-boiler of the lowest merit — neither saucy stuff for kids nor a time-pass for the accompanying parents.

Lily Collins is rather anaemic as the heroine, though in the end, she sort of acquires an Audrey Hepburn profile. So much for that yesteryear queen but Julia Roberts is pathetic, not her as much as the casting. Armie Hammer does well as the showpiece he is meant to but 106 minutes of boredom is surely not what the viewer has bargained for. Move over Mirror, Mirror. Find some other wall.

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