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Review / ‘The Huntsman: Winter’s War’ (M) ***

The Huntsman- Winter's War movieWHAT? Three stars for a fairytale? Has this reviewer lost his edge?

No, he hasn’t. Fairytales make more relaxed dramatic demands than serious narrative and their target audience is somewhat younger, or at least younger at heart, than we who demand that films challenge, confront, send messages and any other serious characteristics you care to name. This fairytale, while bog-standard evil versus virtue, offers clichés that somehow don’t seem to matter, disasters that aren’t allowed to ruin outcomes, stoushes that should leave the screen covered in corpses (and occasionally do), characters with sometimes fewer than two dimensions and monsters whose fossilised remains eager paleontologists have yet to discover.

It also has three splendidly handsome female leads: Charlize Theron is Ravenna, a domineering, selfish, cruel Queen; Emily Blunt is Ravenna’s sister Freya, the Ice Queen and Jessica Chastain is Sara, the bonny fighter who once loved Eric the Huntsman and still does despite believing him long dead.

Ah, yes. Eric the Huntsman. You can take the boy out of Australia. But

you can never totally take the Australian out of the boy. Chris Hemsworth has the good fortune to share the final clinch with Sara. But he’s got to be very physical to get that far.

For my money, the real hero of “Winter’s War” is production designer Dominic Watkins, whose contributions are lush and handsome. The screenplay by Evan Spiliotopoulos and Craig Mazin makes no demands on the intellect. French director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan stages it as convincingly as may be.

For my remaining money, the film’s most endearing characters are dwarf twins played by Nick Frost and Rob Brydon, and the cute munchkins (Sheridan Smith and Alexandra Roach) who will undoubtedly take them home after the film ends.

At all cinemas

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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