It’s a gloomy road to a happy ending

It kind of felt like I was in the wrong theater.
I was there for “Snow White.” (Don’t judge.) But this felt more like I’d stumbled into “Les Miserables.”
I was hoping for happy little guys who whistled while they worked. Instead, I saw miserable souls under a vain ruler who knew nothing about the common man. If I’d wanted that, I could have watched CNN.
Eventually, it all works out and there’s a happy ending. (Sorry, I should have put up a spoiler alert.) But it was a rough road to get there.
Disney has been busy doing live-action remakes of its cartoon classics. They’ve ranged from good (“Beauty and the Beast,” “Mulan,” Kenneth Branagh’s “Cinderella”) to adequate (“Aladdin,” “The Little Mermaid”) or less (“Dumbo”).
But this one goes to the heart of its collection. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” came out in 1937, the first feature-length cartoon; it helped propel Disney into big-time Hollywood.
For the remake, the title has been shortened. That avoids one dilemma (whether to say “dwarfs” or “dwarves”) and downplays another (whether the story offers a cruel stereotype of a dwarf).
My dictionary says both spellings are correct and also says an alternate meaning of “dwarf” is a non-human in legend or fairy tale.
Anyway, we do see them eventually, and they’re legendary creatures in the hobbit/ewok mode. They have big, animatronic-type heads. They’re a dopey-sleepy-sneezy bunch; most of them are good hosts and all are happy workers.
By the time we meet them, we need their enthusiasm. After a couple happy minutes, the evil queen takes over. Even the color palette is gloomy. The world sinks deeper in despair, before finally righting itself.
The new songs are merely adequate, especially alongside the vibrant ones carried over from the original. Gal Gadot is an OK villain; Rachel Zegler is a nice enough Snow.
For a much better movie, catch Zegler as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s wonderful “West Side Story.” That one reminded us that a remake can be much more than adequate.