Understated ‘Snow White’ Is a Fair Treat

Sometimes it pays to play it straight.

Since its first full-length animated feature in 1937, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” Disney has freely adapted fairy tales with magical results, but Sunday’s “Wonderful World of Disney” presentation, a live-action “Snow White: The Fairest of Them All” (7 p.m., ABC), works without straying far from the Brothers Grimm story or adding musical interludes.

As the evil stepmother, Miranda Richardson is no cackling villain in the Cruella DeVil mode. With understated devilishness and frailty, she personifies the perils of vanity and jealousy at the heart of this morality tale. Richardson shows us a little of ourselves each time she demands, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” And she sends shivers by whispering of her stepdaughter, “Never mind her. She wouldn’t know pleasure if it pinched her.”

Writer-director-producer Caroline Thompson has a visual flair that serves the story without getting in the way.

In this telling, Snow White (Kristin Kreuk) is born from a drop of blood in a flutter of apple blossoms, a blessing for a peasant couple. Her arrival also brings a curse that claims her mother, but salvation comes suddenly when tears from her father (Tom Irwin) melt the icy tomb of a devious creature, the Granter of Wishes (Clancy Brown). Snow White’s father gets nourishment for his starving baby, a kingdom and a queen, but the creature also owes a debt to its vile sister (Richardson): She gets an instant makeover, a king and, of course, a stepdaughter to menace.

Fans of the animated original may be hard-pressed to call this “Snow White” the fairest of all, but as family entertainment, it’s more than fair.