Geeky Nerd

This post will talk about an animated film from South Korea named “Red Shoes And The Seven Dwarfs”(2019). It’s a fresh take on the tale of Snow White and popular European fairy tales and legends. It shows how inner beauty is more important that the person’s looks and how perceiving only outer beauty will not allow you to connect with other people.

In other words: don’t judge a book by its cover. In addition, love a person for who they are and not who they pretend to be. A simple message but done in a light way with some great humour.

Some may have heard of this film due to its failed original marketing campaing which was accused of alleged fat-shaming. After seeing this film, I can say that these accusations are completely false and cannot be further from truth.

The Protagonists

Snow White

Princess of the kingdom where the story takes place. Her mother died some time before the story and when her father married a woman who one day mysteriously appeared in their castle, people started disappearing. Unfortunately for her and her father, they have noticed it when it was to late and her father also mysteriously vanished without a trace, so now she must find him and unveil this tragedy.

The Fearless Seven

Legendary seven heroes who were once renowned across the land but haven’t been seen for some time. They are named Merlin, Arthur, Jack, Hans, Pino, Noki, and Kio. They are young and quite self-absorbed due to their popularity. Once they have beaten a dragon to save a princess but the one they have found looked ugly by their standards, so they believed she was a witch and beat her up as well. The woman turned out to be not a witch but a fairy princess who cursed them to look like gnomes whenever someone is looking at them. This specific of the curse would create a bunch of interesting and funny scenes in the film. The curse could be broken only by a kiss from “the most beautiful woman in the world“.

A little bit of a spoiler here: by “the most beautiful” it actually meant “the one you truly love” because your most beloved person is perfect in your eyes regardless of his or her appearance.

The Plot

The story revolves around princess Snow White who was searching for her dad who went missing as an evil witch usurped his crown. While searching for clues she finds a magical tree that instead of fruit, bore a pair of red shoes, which have got the power to make you extremely beautiful. The real Snow White here is a plum girl who gets changed into a typical model type by the shoes and escapes the witch on a broom (the broom will later play an important part for the plot even if I won’t mention it anymore).

Later she landed in the house of the fearless seven whom she asked for help. Since they were looking for a beautiful woman to break the curse and Snow White was wearing the shoes, they all fell for her beauty and agreed to help her find her father while in reality they only cared about getting rid of the curse.

Over the course of the film, Snow White and Merlin start to get close to each other and at some point he learns of her true appearance. Still believing that appearance is the most important thing, he wonders off into the woods to gather wood and his thoughts. There he has a conversation with himself about Show White and his feeling towards her. He also seemed to find himself ashamed at the fact that Snow White liked him for who he is inside with all his narcissism while he couldn’t accept her appearance as if it mattered to him more than her personality. This conversation was probably my most beloved part of the whole film since it’s rare to find the topic of shame to be touched upon in animation.

Alas, the night ends with the witch taking Snow White into the castle and Merlin rushes to save her leaving a message for his friend to come help him. In the end, Merlin risks his life for Snow White and kills the witch. Miraculously surviving Snow White kisses him and breaks the curse since now she is the most beautiful woman in his life because now he loves her true self and not the image crated by the shoes.

The rest of the seven realize that they need to find their true loves to break the curse, so during the credits sequence we can see some more fresh takes on fairy tales as they all find their love interests.

The Theme

Main topic of the film that is well accented both visually and verbally by characters is physical appearance. It’s a very common topic for South Korea and around the world as well. Statista reveals that almost a third of young women in South Korea in 2020 underwent plastic surgery since they are dissatisfied with the way they look. Of course, it is not wrong to fix some parts that trouble you greatly, but chasing an ever changing ideal of beauty is unreasonable. This animated film is meant to expose this issue and suggest girls to not be so critical about the way they look. Additionally, it does so in a very fun way which is rather rare in modern animation, at least in the West.

Trivia

There are a few miscellaneous funny bits in the film that I want to share before ending this post.

First one is Arthur and Excalibur. Since he needed to be sincere in his motivations in order to pull the sword out of the stone, he hadn’t succeeded during the events of the film. However, I like how his friends helped him get the sword:

Second joke is about smoke and mirrors, well, one magic mirror this time:

Thirdly, I find it interesting how Pinocchio in the original tale wanted to be a “real boy” but in this variation Pino, Noki and Kio created a wooden robot to control:

Lastly, I adore Merlin’s magical talismans on purely cultural level. I’m not sure how to explain it but, I guess, I just liked this traditionally Eastern magic method being used by a traditionally European mage. Probably also because I’m fascinated by the idea of paper talismans from anime.

All in all, there are many other tings that can be mentioned about this film but these are the most important ones. I hope, you’ll like this film, too. It’s definitely worth watching. It surely has some mediocre moments but overall it’s a good film that can be enjoyed by both parents and children.