Where to stream Snow White star's 'much better' musical roles as Disney remake hits screens
Football March 21, 2025 11:39 PM

Disney’s Snow White remake starring Rachel Zegler has received scathing reviews as it hits cinemas this Friday (21st March).

Based on the studio’s classic animated film from 1937, Zegler steps into the role of the beautiful princess who’s forced to work as a scullery maid when her cruel stepmother, the Evil Queen (played by Gal Gadot) takes over her kingdom.

When the Queen discovers the girl is now the fairest in the land, she orders a huntsman (Ansu Kabia) to kill her, but he instead warns Snow White of her stepmother’s evil intentions.

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Driven deeper into the forest, she meets a group of seven dwarfs who take her in and help her overthrow the Queen.

Nearly 100 years after the beloved original film was released, this modern update has sadly been maligned by fans and critics. It currently holds a lacklustre 46 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes, though the audience score has not been confirmed.

However, Zegler’s performance is widely regarded as the film’s biggest strength, with the Independent writing: “Rachel Zegler deserves better than the lazy, visually repellent Snow White.”

With her latest big screen offering getting slammed in the reviews, two much better showcases of her musical talents are currently streaming and definitely shouldn’t be missed.

West Side Story

Steven Spielberg’s re-imagining of the classic Broadway musical and its 1961 movie adaptation is considered by some one as of the Hollywood auteur’s best films of the past 20 years.

Zegler stars as María, the sister of the leader of a gang of Puerto Rican youths, the Sharks, feuding with a gang of white teens known as the Jets in this epic love story inspired by Romeo and Juliet.

Although she’s betrothed to a Shark, she soon falls in love with a Jet named Tony (Ansel Elgort) and they start to imagine a future together away from their impoverished and violent lives in 1950s New York.

One five-star Google review proclaimed: “THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE MOVIE!

“West Side Story was beautifully made. It was a huge step up from the original [...] in 1961. Those who liked the original or Broadway version, I highly recommend this new version.”

And a Letterboxd user raved: “Rachel Zegler is a revelation. Not only does she have the voice of an actual angel, but she’s also simply INCREDIBLE at internalizing María’s innocence and expressing her earnest love of life itself, lighting up the screen any time she takes center stage.

“It’s already been said a billion times, but this girl is going places - she has that tremendous movie star magnetism you can’t teach.”

West Side Story is available to stream on Disney+.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Released in 2023, this long-awaited prequel to the Hunger Games quartet, based on the books by Suzanne Collins, was seen as a pleasant surprise by fans and critics.

In this dystopian epic, America rises from the ashes of a nuclear war by pitting its citizens against each other in a televised battle royale to the death.

10 years on from the first Hunger Games and ratings are dwindling, but the future president Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) changes the course of history when he’s assigned to help the musical Lucy Gray Baird (Zegler) win the brutal tournament.

While this sci-fi blockbuster isn’t strictly a musical, Zegler has a number of memorable musical performances, notably singing the franchise’s iconic folk song The Hanging Tree, one of the best examples of the star’s stunning vocal chops.

One Google review highlighted the central performance: “Her acting as Lucy Gray literally felt like she ripped her straight off of the paper. She was the most perfect Lucy Gray and I don’t think anyone else could have done her as much justice as Rachel did.

“Even more than Rachel’s acting, is her INCREDIBLE singing. We all know Rachel is a fantastic singer, but her voice in this movie is her voice like I have never heard it before.”

An an obsessive Letterboxd user wrote: “Gonna be honest with y'all this film is all that has been going through my head since the first time I watched it.”

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is available to stream on Prime Video.

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