This Snow White-meets-The Wizard of Oz-meets-Tangled tale is a delight—sprinkled with clean humor and loaded with valuable lessons for children and adults.

The Fearless Seven, Fairytale Island’s undeniable heroes, accidentally tried to kill a fairy princess, a rather greenish fairy that resembled an evil witch. As punishment, the princess turned The Fearless Seven into tiny green dwarfs, and though their powers remained, it was hard to save the world standing two feet tall. Embarrassed and unable to protect the people, The Fearless Seven staked out in the mountains, searching for a beautiful kiss from a princess to break their curse.

Unlike Disney’s iconic Snow White, Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs‘ Snow White is round and curvy. She takes after her father, the king, who married a deceptive, charming, beautiful witch, Regina. On a search to find eternal beauty, Regina destroys the king’s palace, and the king disappears. Snow White is determined to find her father, and once she discovers two red shoes that change her into a more slender, more socially-defined “attractive” woman, Regina does everything in her power to chase down Snow White and retrieve the red shoes.

Running for her life, Snow White bumps into seven short, ogre-like men who offer to help her find her father (in hopes for Snow White’s kiss to break the curse). Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs follows their adventure to find the king and restore The Fearless Seven, but this journey teaches them more lessons than how to slay evil woodland monsters and ward off the bad guys.

Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs is like most other fairytale stories. There are witches and dragons and spells and magical powers, but each fantasy feature is mild in content and doesn’t create intense, scary scenes for younger children. There’s occasional “kick butt” and “hitting on a girl” references, an innocent kiss, and a dwarf who likes whacking bad guys in the head with an iron pan, but other than that, the script remains clean.

This film reminds us that looks can drive motivation all day long, but when the day is done, physical appearances can’t promise friendship, love, and sacrifice. Because of this theme, we award Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs Dove-approval for All Ages.

The Dove Take:

This Snow White-meets-The Wizard of Oz-meets-Tangled tale is a delight–sprinkled with clean humor and loaded with valuable lessons for children and adults.