The Incomplete Guide to Snow White and Flow
In which Vanessa asks what Disney does now, and Elliot answers what the competition is.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (2025)
By Vanessa Burke
If I may, I’d like to start this review very far away from the film’s happenings. Instead, I ask, what do we expect from a Disney movie in 2025? It’s not an easy question: Disney releases movies from as many different production companies as these movies have genres, and intended audiences.
There’s Walt Disney Pictures (most of their live action offerings, and their classic fairy tales), Walt Disney Animation Studios (that animated fare, including the classic fairy tales), Pixar (the quirky stories of lives we can’t capture in real life), Marvel Studios (super heroes), Lucasfilm (space heroes), 20th Century Studios (live action fare with an entertainment factor, spanning all eras of film), and Searchlight Pictures (serious and fun prestige live action film fare).
Disney has tried to reckon with the fact that fairy tales offer less entertainment value in the face of social media competition, and that an increasingly globalised world highlights both what sets us apart and what makes us different. But they can’t resist telling the same stories.
This started fairly unproblematically in 1996, with 101 Dalmatians, starring Glenn Close. The story swaps out some nationalities, pulls the action into contemporary times - possibly not much more was needed, as the 90s were a simpler time still. More than 10 years later, Tim Burton took a stab at reimagining Alice in Wonderland. While he was incredibly true to himself, the resemblance to the previous film iteration - and the focus of the story - was far beyond the looking glass. Nevertheless, this was more of a cash-in on the then-popularity of Johnny Depp.
In 2015, we hit upon Maleficent. This retold the story of Sleeping Beauty, with aesthetics that strongly draw from the 1959 animated film, but from the point of view of its arch villain. It was critically well-received, imparting both classic lessons, such as not judging a book by its cover, and the purity of a mother’s love for a daughter. Yet, just a year later, Kenneth Branagh took away Cinderella’s songs, but otherwise kept the story intact. The Jungle Book stunned with realism, but similarly followed the animated story closely. Both were also great successes.
In 2017, Beauty and the Beast was released, starring Emma Watson, of Harry Potter fame, and Dan Stevens, of Downton Abbey fame. It teased the reveal that LeFou was gay. Principally, learning more about the characters was not problematic, considering the shorter runtimes of the early animated features, which the live action movies did not want to be limited by.
But here we catch up again with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs of 2025, and a turn of phrase by one of my favourite pop culture critics, Tom Bricker: “addition by subtraction” - or in this case, the opposite, that is “subtraction by addition”. What I mean by that is, that adding these details added nothing to the story of value.
In 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, showing that LeFou is gay may at best explain his reverence of the villain. In the end, the gay moment turned out to be LeFou dancing with a man briefly at the end - hardly homoerotic in a film that was rated G or PG, depending on your location.
The tricky thing about reviewing a film that is recently released is that you don’t want to spoil the film for anyone who chooses to see it still. Renowned critics pick up on the themes, the production quality, and the emotional resonance. So I tell you, there are lessons that this retelling of the fairy tale seeks to teach, such as resolute kindness and community strength. CGI has been used, often not well. Rachel Zegler shines. Gal Gadot hams it up. While I’m often a sucker for Disney film tears, Walt Disney Picture remakes never have moved me thus, whereas Pixar hardly ever fails in this endeavour.
But I return to the question: with Snow White as an example, what do we expect from a Disney movie in 2025? It lives up to the slate of passionless-seeming remakes I’ve seen, all of which were based on staples of my childhood that I still fervently defend, even though I recognise problematic elements: Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan.
They made money, so why wouldn’t Snow White, if it follows the formula? It adds admittedly catchy bops to the musical canon. It employed movie industry staffers. And when Disney tries to do something different, like Strange World (very cute, in my opinion), it is not financially nor critically rewarded. So my answer (to my question) is I expect little. And instead look to other production companies and studios, for films like Flow.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is currently in UK cinemas.
Flow
By Elliot Wengler
After winning Best Animated Film at both the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, Flow has a lot to live up to (only losing the BAFTA to Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl). Its awards success has meant that it has broken new ground as the first Latvian film to win an Oscar, a historic placing for Gints Zilbalodis: director, writer, producer, and the film’s composer. It’s enjoying a smaller release in the UK through Curzon.
Flow follows last year’s Robot Dreams as a dialogue-free film full of animals, the latter a tale of Dog and his Robot, which was jaunty and melancholic in equal measure (and one of my top five films from last year). Yet Flow is a completely different story.
Flow features a black cat in an abandoned cabin house in the woods. He goes about his day, trying to catch fish from the river, then runs away from a pack of dogs including a Labrador (the characters, all animals, go unnamed so I will use their species as their names). Their lives are turned upside-down by a sudden, violent, and intense mudflow. It breaches the riverbanks, and ascends the hills. The trees, the hills and the beautiful mysterious statues of all the local wildlife all go under this flooded world. Cat eventually escapes onto a small sailboat helmed by Capybara.
From there, the wildlife proceed on an odyssey somewhere between Heart of Darkness and Noah’s ark. It’s more of a tense thriller than a children’s film, which filled me with all the more joy, as my screening was full of kids, who were stunned into silence and kept on the edges of their seats as the animals journeyed into the unknown. Labrador returns, and the boat is eventually captained by Secretarybird, and Lemur tries to bring and protect his treasures. Each of the animals gets a story arc, each learns something from the other.
And each of them communicates only through authentic animal noises throughout. Realistic and emotive barking, meows, and birdsong are employed in place of dialogue, which adds even more mystery and holds your attention more powerfully. Cat is voiced by Miut, a cat that is fittingly, the pet of the sound designer, Gurwal Coïc-Gallas. Zilbalodis scored the film too, and every little moment is in perfect sync.
Flow is possibly one of the most beautiful films you will ever see on the big screen. The feature is rendered on widely available software (Blender), but the whole thing looks like a constantly moving watercolour painting. The perpetually rising water achieves a 3D effect unlike anything I’ve ever seen, beyond the capacity of even Studio Ghibli or Pixar. It’s so simple, yet the look is so realised and detailed. It’s a full three-dimensional world, even though the mix of cell-shading and modelling achieves the painted look.
Flow has stunning and ambitious sequences, with wonderful tension throughout, because the animals can’t explain what is going on. The fable-like setting is there to ease you in, but the story is gripping, with the mysterious flood seeming to never end, the apocalypse going unexplained. Zilbalodis treats the audience as intelligent and with respect, and will leave you blown away with a sense of intrigue and wonder.
In an ideal world, every film should feel like nothing you’ve ever seen before. This is that experience.
Flow is in cinemas now.