I would think that working on a film that grounds itself in the logic of fairy tales is very freeing. The parameters of plausibility widen quite a bit when the plot is inherently open to fairies, haunted forests and nasty figures who can go jaunting across the land in the guise of a murder or crows any old time they feel like it. Theoretically, the vastness of creativity can and should also open up accordingly, allowing for the vigorous application of the sort of blessed wonderment that’s already the secret ingredient of most movies. Snow White and the Huntsman soundly refutes my notion.

In the latest example of Hollywood’s bizarre Xerox mentality, this is the second modern (though not modernized) repurposing of the Snow White story in just about as many months, following Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror. While the earlier offering seemed to be a goofy, kid-friendly version, Snow White‘s first-time director Rupert Sanders and his collaborators (the screenplay has three credited writers, and I’m sure it passed through many hands during the development process) are clearly angling for a vibe that lands somewhere in between Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films and the muscular grittiness of HBO’s Game of Thrones. This is about action and fantasy, all gloomy castles and muddy battle scenes.

Kristen Stewart may be around to be perpetually pouty and dewy-eyed, but the movie has only the faintest tingle of interest in the sort of romantic longing that has made her a kajillion dollars in the Twilight movies, even if true love’s kiss actually factors into the story, albeit left unnamed as such. Awkward as it may be, Sanders is more invested in getting Snow White all dressed up in armor to lead a ragtag army into battle against the evil queen’s forces by giving her own version of Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech. Unfortunately, Stewart is so woefully ill-suited to this aspect of the character that I half-expected her to cry out, “We few, we shrill, lamely agitated few!”

The malevolent sorceress who rules the land is played by Charlize Theron, a performer with uncommon commitment to even the thinnest, silliest of roles. She plays Ravenna with a luscious appreciation for the pure menace that grows from her unrelenting narcissism (true to the tale, it is her fear over no longer being the fairest in the land that sets the machinery of conflict into motion, although there’s some additional nonsense about the presence of more beautiful woman compromising her survival because of a spell cast long ago by her mother), glaring at everyone around her and letting the last word of nearly every sentence arrive after an extra half-beat or so, the unmistakable cadence of villainy. Through the first third or so, the film belongs to her as much as anyone else, but once Snow White encounters the huntsman played by Chris Hemsworth, Theron’s queen is mostly smushed into the middle of special effects or buried under makeup tricks for the rest of the film.

Deprived of the fine, frothy distraction of Theron’s performance, there’s far too much time to focus on the many things the film does clumsily: sketching out the lives of the beset residents of the overtaken land, dispensing comic profundities through the requisite inclusion of the seven dwarfs (played by esteemed actors such as Ian McShane and Bob Hoskins, employing admittedly impressive special effects), conveying grave importance through the use of painfully pretentious slow motion and imposing some half-hearted proto-feminism on the story. None of it is actually dreadful, but it doesn’t add up to much either. It would be satisfactory if Snow White and the Huntsman were simply a pleasant diversion, as wispy and charming as a bedtime story should be. Instead, it’s gnarled, glum and almost entirely lifeless.