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How much does it suck, you ask? Actually, it doesn't. Not really. Oh, it overstays its welcome, of course -- it's a totally wholesome trad musical, after all. But Disney's latest "live action" remake of one of its legacy properties -- in this case the 1937 animated classic "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," which was the company's first feature film -- is a quality product. You can see where most of its $240 million budget was spent, and you -- or at least a kid of your acquaintance -- may find it delightful.

On the other hand, you also might wish there was a little less cliche wokeness involved in its creation, and maybe a little more fresh magic. At its best, the movie does recall the hand-fashioned beauty of its long-ago original with an abundant digital artistry -- every square foot of IMAX screen is stuffed with bunnies and bluebirds and cozy cottage interiors. Unfortunately, there's also a sort of Broadway brassiness to the proceedings -- with all of the yodeling revelers and high-kicking dance antics on view, it sometimes feels like you're sitting through a road-show "Oklahoma!"

That the movie managed to overcome its sour beginnings is no minor accomplishment. First there was the tone-deaf announcement by its star, the talented if not entirely charming Rachel Zegler ("West Side Story"), that her title character was "not going to be saved by the prince, and she's not going to be dreaming about true love; she's going to be dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be." Great.

There was also a bit of numbskull muttering about the presence in the movie's cast of Gal Gadot, who is openly Israeli. And then there was the "Seven Dwarfs" problem. Peter Dinklage, who surely knows more about dwarfism than any other star, was put off by the movie's casting. "They were very proud to cast a Latino actress as Snow White," Dinklage said (Zegler is of part-Colombian descent), "but you're still telling the story of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.' Take a step back and look at what you're doing there."

What Disney was doing, of course, was remaking a world-famous movie with the word "dwarfs" in its title, based on a 200-year-old fairy tale that is also explicitly dwarf-centric. The company must have sensed the first rumblings of blowback, though, and the dwarfs had to go. So instead of providing a rare bigtime payday for seven little-people actors, it was decided that these characters would instead be digitally confected with motion-capture technology. Also, they would now be known, around Disney corporate offices, at least, not as dwarfs, but as "magical creatures" -- not that anyone would ever call them that. (Oddly, one real-life little person did make it into the movie, in the form of a crossbow marksman named Quigg, who's played by George Appleby, a onetime Dinklage stunt double on "Game of Thrones.")

With the exception of a couple of songs -- "Waiting on a Wish," maybe, and "Princess Problems" -- the music here is fairly generic, especially when the songs are delivered by Zegler, who's an irrepressible belter. This was not the case with the indelible tunes in the 1937 film, a few of which, like "Heigh-Ho" and "Whistle While You Work," are reprised here. Not among the callbacks, however, is the sublime "Someday My Prince Will Come" -- a song that, despite its unfashionable expression of girly romantic longing, has found favor with musicians ranging from Miles Davis to Sinead O'Connor. There's a faint instrumental echo of "Someday" in the movie's underscore, but a fuller rendition would be awkward in any event -- because there's no longer a prince in the story. Now the character who wakes Snow White with a kiss is just a guy named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap). And while -- spoiler alert -- these two appear to marry at the end, there's no way to tell for sure. Being given nothing in the way of transition, we simply see that all of the characters are suddenly leaping about in white party clothes, and that's it -- there's no whisper of the word "wedding."

The story, surely familiar to even the most blase toddler by now, remains intact. There's a royal orphan and a cruel stepmother (Gadot in glittering black gowns and grandly sweeping capes), a talking mirror, a poisoned apple, a scary dark forest, and the aforementioned group of magical creatures. Director Marc Webb (who did two "Amazing Spider-Man" movies back in the day) keeps the tale pretty much on track (and keeps it under two hours, too), although I wish he'd gotten a chokehold on the magical creature called Dopey, who's clearly modeled on the old Mad magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman and who seems at every turn determined to jerk our tears with an interlude of shamelessly sweet weeping. Where's a cruel stepmother -- a really cruel stepmother -- when you need her?

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To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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