A SNOW WHITE CHRISTMAS (2018)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

While this 2018 DTV flick is no match for the classic rom-coms of the 1990s, at least the script rings in enough changes on the classic "Snow White" template that it doesn't seem as pedestrian and predictable as most current romance movies.

This SNOW still includes an innocent young woman and her evil stepmother, but this time their conflict is over money, not their respective physical charms. Blanca Snow (Michelle Randolph) is a good-hearted woman with a strong jones for all things Christmassy. Her father died a year ago, but his will is supposed to come into effect on December 25. On that date, the father's estate will be divided equally between Blanca and her stepmother Victoria (Carolyn Hennesey). Scheming Victoria wants the whole estate, and though she's not a queen, she's encouraged by her fellow conspirator Zane (Rich Barnes), her "magic mirror" adviser, who's so obviously swishy that he could be labeled another kind of "queen."

Somehow the conspirators find a criminal hypnotist and get her to erase Blanca's memory, so that she'll just take up residence elsewhere. If Blanca is absent for the critical reading of the will, the whole estate goes to Victoria. This is clearly a deflection from the stock idea of killing one inheritor so that another one will get the bounty. Yet in the real world it's doubtful that a will would specify that an heir, especially the daughter of the decedent, would get eliminated just because she's not physically present on a certain date. Such a stipulation is even more arbitrary than many of those in archaic folktales. Nevertheless, the hypnosis scene is amusing because Zane's loose talk accidentally qualifies the hypnotic spell, with the result that now Blanca's memory erasure will only persist until she falls in true love.

And here we have the other fairly clever aspect of SNOW, because during Snow's amnesiac exile she encounters two studs she met in her old life, one whose last name is Prince while the other's first name is Hunter. Given some of the bad rap that heroic princes get these days, nearly no one will be surprised at which hunk gets to make Blanca's heart go pit-a-pat so that she regains her true self and foils the plans of the evil queen-- oh, and his mistress too.

Randolph plays the good-as-gold Blanca straight, which means that she's not particularly compelling. Hennesey and Barnes get all the funny lines, as well as receiving a modestly amusing comeuppance. Oh, and as icing on the cake, during her exile Blanca gets some moral support from a Christmas band-- whose players number seven.