49. Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs     (1937) directed by David Hand Next: #48. Jaws Prev: #50. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid

I was aware that it was a Disney movie, that it was a cartoon, that it's very popular with 6-year-olds, and that the chances of cursing, nudity, car crashes, pithy dialogue, and powerful cinematography were between slim and none. And slim called in sick. Other than that, I was looking forward to it.

Snow White is a beautiful young maiden fair with a problem. She's made a powerful enemy, her Evil Stepmother (coincidentally, the Queen). The Queen orchestrates a plot to whack the dame. Fortunately for Disney purposes, the hit man chickens out and tells White to go out on the lamb. She takes a full-time job on the Q.T., tending house and playing den mother to a pack of seven diminutive diamond-miners. The Evil Stepmom tries to take matters into her own hands and off the chick herself. It doesn't work.

• According to IMDB, there were originally fifty names submitted as potential dwarf names. What's that? You want to know which seven I would have picked? OK, twist my arm. Here's the Definitive List of The Seven Dwarfs That Should Have Been. Itchy, Gamey, Nazi, Dropsy, Hippie, Preachy, and Incontinent. There. You asked for it.
• Why is it the Brothers Grimm, but the Marx Brothers? The Brothers Karamazov, but the Flying Wallenda Brothers?
• One of the five funniest lines I've heard on TV came from one of the lamest sitcoms there ever was. Maybe you remember "The Charmings", that desperate late-80s show, where the premise was that the characters, essentially, from Snow White fell asleep once upon a time and woke up in 1987 L.A. Anyway, in one episode, the Queen told her Mirror (played by Paul Winfield) she was going out for the day, and the Mirror said, "So what am I supposed to do all day? Just sit around and reflect?" Heh heh.
• Amazingly, in the extensive list of animators we find the name Cy Young. I can't believe it's the same guy who won 511 games around the turn of the century and had the award for pitching excellence named after him. I just can't believe that.
• If I met Snow White, I'd have one question for her. Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?
• Because this movie predated feminism by 40 years, you know from the start that some handsome Prince is going to save her at the end. But the Prince only appears in two scenes: one at the beginning when she's flitting around the wishing well, and then at the end, when he swoops in to save her. I could use a little more subplot of him chasing after her. Especially once the rumors must have started that the Queen bumped Snow White off. Where was Prince I'll-Be-There-Soon during the whole film?
• Snow White convinces the animals to clean the dwarfhouse. No small feat in itself, it does raise the interesting question of whether a house cleaned by forest creatures ends up actually cleaner than at the beginning. Have all the little squirrels and deer been checked for ticks and rabies?
• And if the dwarfs really are as grubby as they're made out to be, why do they own seven bars of soap?
• The personalities of the dwarfs, and the interplay between them, is pretty neat. I really identified with Grumpy (pick your jaw up off the floor), and Dopey I could have done without. But they all lived up to their names well, which is more than can be said for Chastity Bono or Madonna.
• For a kids' movie, the witch costume the Queen dons at the end is major-league creepy. Those eyes bug me out, man. Sheesh. She doesn't blink.
• The Queen's poisoned apple puts Snow White into a state of "sleeping death", which frankly raises more questions than it answers. The dwarfs put her on display in a morbid dead-Soviet-dictator kind of way, but we never know if they checked for a pulse, or held a mirror up to her face or anything. Was there any flicker of consciousness? Did her body take in any nutrients, or (forgive me) perform elimination? If so, who dealt with it? The grimy dwarves, or the woodland creatures? Was Doc a real medical doctor, and could he do anything to keep her functioning? Was anyone doing physical therapy to keep her limbs active?
• I'm sorry about all that. I know it's a kids' cartoon, for God's sake. But ER is on, so I'm in a medical frame of mind. And honestly...if I had to sit through all 93 minutes of a kids' cartoon, you're all coming with me.

Grumpy: All females is poison! They're full of wicked wiles!
Bashful: What are wicked wiles?
Grumpy: I don't know. But I'm ag'in 'em.

For a kids' movie, Snow White was pretty involved. There were so many neat little touches: the huntsman bringing back a deer heart, the freakish witch costume that the Queen wears, the cool portrayals of the dwarfs. Compare that to a Disney movie these days, when they chuck all that stuff out the window in favor of a celebrity voice and a billion-dollar soundtrack. This was a real movie. Not one I'll watch over and over again, but I suppose it was Top-100-worthy.

Ink, plasticene, and a team of animators as everyone and everything.