Here’s the follow-up to 2012’s SFX whimsy-cake Snow White and the Huntsman, bookending that film’s narrative with both a backstory and a continuation – which makes it, I suppose, a “sprequel”. Emily Blunt emerges with honour, offering more nuance than the film deserves, as Freya, tragic sister to Charlize Theron’s wicked witch queen. Turning her back on love, Freya repairs to the northern wastes to rule a land of snow and ice, and presumably to lie low in case Disney’s lawyers question the resemblance to Frozen. Playing squeeze to Chris Hemsworth’s Huntsman, Jessica Chastain dons a leather jerkin and wields a bow and arrow – solemnly channelling a touch of Red Sonja, for you older sword-and-sorcery fans. There are many offensive things about this insipid confection, foremost among them the fact that Nick Frost, Rob Brydon, Sheridan Smith and Alexandra Roach have had their faces digitally grafted on to the bodies of comedy dwarves. Even for a film set in a fantasy middle ages, that’s not very 21st century.
