Big Screen Peter: Mirror Mirror

This past Sunday was April Fools' Day. And the list of corporate and political pranks perpetrated by various entities this year is lengthy.

If your first instinct each morning is to check in on the weather forecast, Google had a good joke for you. Kodak was offering an opportunity to print your own live kittens, while Mitt Romney was introduced to an empty room.

Richard Branson announced a bid, aptly named “Virgin Volcanic,” to take passengers to the center of the earth. The first passengers? Branson himself along with Tom Hanks, star of the 1990 film, Joe Versus the Volcano.

While most of these faux-stunts were cute and fun, the hands down worst prank of April Fools' was Relativity Media making impressionable kids and gullible adults believe that Mirror Mirror was actually worth the price of admission.

Spoiler Alert!

It's not.

Mirror Mirror is a nonsensical romp; proof, one would suppose, that literally anything can be packaged and sold, even if it's diarrhea stained pants, so long as Julia Roberts is involved.

Cast as the wicked queen/stepmother of Snow White, Roberts is asked to be beautiful, cruel, and demanding. One out of three only works in baseball. A bit past her prime to play the “fairest” of them all, her character never possess much of an edge either. Which speaks to the weird, slapstick angle of the movie.

Snow White is the quintessential fairy tale: evil stepmother, prince charming, protective dwarves, etc. But while there are humorous elements in most all renditions of the tale, the underlying darkness is (generally) retained.

With Mirror Mirror, Roberts does her best to be catty and “evil,” but never comes across as more than a shrill, petty woman with no real power. The expectation isn't for blood and guts, but for the tale of Snow White to work, the character of the evil queen must instill some sort of fear.

That failure is just the smallest of the many issues plaguing the abysmal film. Despite being one of the most well known stories of all time, the plot made absolutely no sense and seemed to have been written out by someone wielding crayons.

As the movie comes to a close, we are treated to an inane ensemble dance number. This seems to be Hollywood's failsafe tool to make people forget about how dumb the previous 90 minutes really were.

Instead of grumbling about the shitstorm of suck that preceded it, audiences can focus on that cute dance number. Just another shiny object to forget that time and money were just utterly wasted.

But hey, there's a silver lining. At least we now know who the front runner at the 2013 Razzie Awards will be.