Original release date: February 4, 1938 nationwide (premiered December 21, 1937 at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Hollywood)

Rating: G for Grumpy.

Length: 1 hour and 24 minutes

Background: Oh, there’s so much background for “Snow White.” Based on the German fairy tale, this was not only the first full-length Disney animated film but the first full-length cel animated film period.

It was a smash at the box office, saving the Disney company (Walt had invested pretty much everything into the film) and beginning the long, long trail of Disney films and of Disney princesses.

Walt was given an honorary Academy Award for the film in the form of one regular-sized Oscar trophy and seven smaller trophies.

The legacy is well-known as Snow White continues to appear all over today. At the Disney parks, she and the dwarves have attractions at Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland, and Disneyland Paris. Snow White herself regularly meets at the various parks as well as the evil queen and the dwarf crew.

Snow White had a video game for the Game Boy as well as a mobile game and appeared in the popular “Kingdom Hearts” series as well.

Snow White and her crew have appeared in random Disney shows and shorts over the years, most recent the dwarfs having their own animated show – “The 7D” – on Disney XD.

Review:

Before I begin this review, a note. The previous reviews, all of shorts, have been pretty much retelling the events of the short moment-by-moment. Movie reviews aren’t going to work that way completely. This is an hour and a half of movie compared to 7-10 minutes of short. This will be more of a review with me pointing out moments, oddities, and things worth watching or that make me cringle. You know, like a review. Ready? Let’s go.

First note: this, like most everything on Disney+, has been given an HD upgrade. It looks beautiful. Colors pop out brightly and the sound is fantastic. Because it is a movie from almost 100 years ago, the black bars are present on the left and right side of the screen.

The movie starts – after the opening credits sequence that will bore your kids – with the Evil Queen talking to her magic mirror. She asks who could possibly be more fair than her in the area. Magic Mirror’s response? Dopey, clearly.

No, it’s Snow White. She sings the first vocal song of the movie – “I’m Wishing” near the wishing well (something else you can find at several Disney parks). As she sings, The Prince just happens to pass by and hear her singing. He creeps up on her, scares her and she runs… as she should. He sings to her, looking down from her window, as would any guy who fell in love ten seconds earlier with somebody he has never met. Evil Queen overhears and is not cool with the random singing and/or beautiful Snow White having enchanted another man before her. (Opinion: Queen is hotter… but, you know, evil.)

Evil Queen orders the Huntsman to find Snow White in the woods, kill her, and bring her heart back in a box. Yeah, that’s probably too far on the crazy scale. Snow White talks to animals because she’s one of those women. Huntsman almost stabs her but instead drops his knife, spills the beans on the Queen’s wishes and tells her run far, far into the woods. The woods are, of course, extra creepy with limbs that try to grab her, creepy owl eyes in trees, and monstrous looking trees. She falls down in terror. Animals – cute ones – come to check on her because she is the animal whisperer.

Snow sings to animals again and this is when we get a first look at how great the animation was and how much the HD has helped it. There are a lot of water scenes with reflections and they look great. It isn’t Pixar “the water looks real” quality but it’s very good for something from the 1930s.

Snow and her animal friends wander up to a cottage, peeping in the windows – Snow also being a creeper – before knocking on the door and just GOING ON IN despite nobody being home. Come on, Snow. Somebody get this house a security system.

Nothing how dusty and messy the house is, Snow decides to get her animal minions to help her clean her house. If you’re breaking and entering to clean, you can stop by my house. This is the scene with “Whistle While You Work,” one of the more iconic songs of the movie.

As the animal horde cleans, we meet the seven dwarfs – Happy, Dopey, Doc, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful, and Sleepy – working in the mines and singing another iconic song, “Heigh-Ho.” It’s off to work they go. It’s one of the most iconic Disney songs of all time, one that has been echoed in Disney commercials for decades and with a whistle that will get stuck in your head for hours.

Snow falls asleep across several dwarf beds, as do the animals. The dwarfs heigh-ho themselves home, still singing about going to work despite clearly coming to their front door. They notice lights on, the door open and the chimney smoking. Grumpy complains about his corns hurting because he is classy. They tiptoe in, noticing how clean the place is. There’s a slight bit of blurring in the animation here. The whole scene drags on a bit long.

Eventually, Dopey gets sent up to investigate. This does not go well as he very loudly screams seeing something under blankets yawning. They creep back in to take care of the sleeping beast, finding “a girl!” and declaring her “mighty purty.” They’re all enchanted except Grumpy, who declares all females bad.

Snow asks “how do you do,” which Grumpy responds with, “How do you do what?” I forgot what a great character he was. After introductions, they discover she is Snow White – the princess!

A very long scene of the dwarfs deciding to clean up and take a bath follows, lasting seemingly 82 minutes or long enough for me to check Facebook, Instagram, and my email.

The movie remembers that the Evil Queen exists, as she again asks the mirror who the fairest one of all is. The Huntsman has duped the Queen, bringing her a pig’s heart in the box while the mirror tells her Snow White, living with seven vertically-challenged gentleman in the woods, is still the fairest of them all. She decides to disguise herself and go destroy Snow White herself.

Queenie uses the powers of magic to transform herself into an old hag, then cooking up a poison apple. One taste will put the taster into the “sleeping death” forever. Villains had a thing for putting princesses to sleep forever in early Disney.

The story goes on with the dwarfs having a dance party, Snow telling the poor dwarfs about some other dude – that she met for five minutes – that she is in love with. This brings us to “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” one of the timeless Disney love songs that is probably tied into a $5,000 wedding package at Disney World now.

Bedtime hits and the dwarfs offer Snow all seven beds – because they’re gentlemen I guess – and sleep around the house as she lounges in the bed. As they sleep, the hag of a queen is just now finishing work on that poison apple. Hopefully it works. She looks back in her book and reads that the only antidote is true love’s first kiss. No foreshadowing at all here!

Snow bids the dwarfs a fond farewell as they head off to work, giving several kisses on their head and making them fall in love forever. Even Grumpy gets in on the action, actually letting out a smile and sign before remembering women are evil and such.

Not long after, Hagatha Christie appears at the window, asking Snow if she is all alone. Hag Queen offers Snow an apple to taste as it is apple pie season. The animals know she is evil but Snow can’t tell. Hag creeps her way into the house with the apple.

The animals scurry off to the mines, warning the dwarfs in animal language that something is up and trying to drag them back. Grumpy, now a hero, leads the charge back. Queen tells Snow that the apple is a magic wishing apple, with one bite making all her wishes come true. Snow, naïve and dumb, takes that bite. Down she goes to sleep, leaving Queen plenty of time to cackle and leave in the timely rainstorm.

The dwarves chase her in hag form instead of going to Snow, which seems like a mistake. In her moment of evil, the Queen meets her fate, taking a tumble that we will assume injured her enough where she can only appear in human form at Disney parks worldwide.

Back home, the dwarfs cry over their sleeping and assumed dead princess friend. They couldn’t find it in their hearts to bury her (thanks to on-screen wording for this information) and made her a see-through glass coffin so they could always look at her. That seems creepy, but okay.

The Prince, who has been off doing everything but showing interest in Snow White for the last hour of the movie, appears at her glass coffin singing. As the dwarfs keep watch, this strange man walks up and kisses the presumed dead girl. You know what happens next. Happily ever after and such.

Well, except for the dwarfs. She hops on the Prince’s horse and leaves them behind. Rude.

Extras:

We’ve got extras!

First, there is a one minute modern day trailer for the movie, one that I’m guessing was made for the most recent Blu-ray release.

We also get an alternate sequence of the Prince and Snow meeting as told through early story sketches and notes from original story meetings. Cool. This is about 3 1/2 minutes worth of material.

We get a deleted scene of the dwarves making Snow a bed. This is with OLD original animation and back and white sketches. It’s cool to see and lasts about six minutes.

“Disney’s First Feature” is a big extra – half an hour! – telling the story of how the movie was made through interviews, classic footage, and anything else they could scrape up.

A tour of Hyperion Studios, where the film was made, rounds out the extras with another half hour of content. Archival interview recordings tell the story of early days in the Walt Disney Studios at Hyperion.

Should you watch it?

You knew before even reading this blog that I’d say watch it. It’s history in cartoon form! It’s Walt’s first full-length feature. It’s the door opening for every great animated film we see today (and the bad ones, you’re welcome “Cars.”

Besides the history, it is legit a good movie. It is mostly entertaining though it does drag on a bit in the middle. The extras are really great add-ons with an hour of behind the scenes fun. Watch, watch, watch!