'Snow White' review: Rachel Zegler enchants in Disney's resonant remake

Not only does the new “Snow White” avoid being the poison apple of Disney live-action redos, it actually manages to put some extra musical mojo on a ubiquitous fairy tale.

Director Marc Webb’s vision honors but also blows up the template of the original “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” The better-than-expected revamp (★★★ out of four; rated PG; in theaters Friday) strips away some of the forgettable matter – no charming princes here! Most importantly, "White" gives an inspired Rachel Zegler a different character arc and a smattering of original songs to let Snow strut as the fairest of them all.

In fact, the fresh stuff is the best part: You’ll note the seven dudes are not mentioned in the new title, and while they’re certainly kid-friendly, the little guys could have just stayed in their mines the whole time and the movie would have been just fine.

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The main gist of the 1937 animated classic remains. Snow (Zegler) is a scullery maid dominated by her stepmother, the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot), who’s more super-nasty then straight-up evil here. The villainess is obsessed with asking her Magic Mirror who's the fairest of them all. When the answer switches from Queenie to Snow, the youngster is tapped to be killed by the royal Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) but instead escapes to a magical forest where she talks to critters and befriends seven colorful roommates all on the shorter side.

The screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson (“The Girl on the Train”) cherry-picks from the cartoon and the old Brothers Grimm tale yet mostly goes its own way, with an even more tragic backstory for Snow and a clear trajectory for her as a Disney princess. When she belts out “Waiting on a Wish” – the nifty “I Want” number among the new tunes by Oscar-winning songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul – Snow is less needing to find love and more yearning to get her royal groove back. Of course, she does share googly eyes with Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), a potato-thieving leader of a group of forest bandits, so there’s something for the romantics in the house.

Zegler, the powerhouse Maria from Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” leans earnest in her goodness, though adds a healthy dose of gumption missing from the OG Snow. She sparks well off the roguish and slightly snarky Burnap and the imperious Gadot, who snaps crab legs with divine menace. It takes a while to buy the former Wonder Woman as a poison apple-making diva – whose magical powers apparently come from her being hot, which is certainly a choice – but is fully in bad witch mode by the time she croons her sinister jam “All Is Fair.”

What’s strange about “Snow White” is while it's pretty much a new musical, there’s a whole center chunk that’s trying way too hard to be the first film. Some of it works – for example, all the CGI animals have a cartoonish quality rather than going the photorealistic “Lion King” route. Other stuff doesn’t play as well, like Snow’s Technicolor dress and old-school bob. (An accidental journey through raging rapids does leave her with a rather stylish wet look for a spell.)

Then there’s Doc, Dopey, Sneezy, Sleepy, Happy and Bashful. (Did I forget anybody? Oh, yeah, Grumpy. Which they make me.) Created via motion-capture performances, puppets and voice acting, these haphazard CGI troll wannabes seem supremely out of place in a movie full of humans and one chatty mirror. They also feel redundant given Jonathan’s bunch of bandits, which include George Appleby, a little person who was on “Game of Thrones.” It’s as if those folks were supposed to fill Dopey and Co.’s work shoes but then someone blinked and added the old crew back in last minute to not mess with the mine train ride at Disney World. That all said, “Heigh-Ho” is still a banger.

Like the best Disney redos such as “Cruella” and “Maleficent,” “Snow White” finds modern relevance amid the old material. In this case, “fairest of them all” is about kindness and empathy instead of beauty, and ultimately this fairy tale reimagining becomes a call to arms against cruelty and tyranny. More than true love’s first kiss or whistling sidekicks, that's something that should make us all Happy.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Snow White' movie review: Rachel Zegler enchants in Disney redo