'The Huntsman: Winter's War' is terrifically bad, accent on 'terrific'

"That is definitely not what a mirror looks like," I whispered as Universal's iconic logo turned gold, then transformed into a slightly concave, totally opaque gilded disk.

"No," my moviegoing companion whispered back. "I think it's some kind of bowl."

These are the sort of thoughts you'll have while watching The Huntsman: Winter's War. It's a derivative, corny, frequently nonsensical mess of a movie.

But you know what? At least it isn't boring.

That sure differentiates it from Snow White and the Huntsman, a dreary, humorless slog from 2012 that starred Kristen Stewart as the first title character and Chris Hemsworth as the second.

Judging by its marketing campaign -- posters that promise to tell "the story before Snow White," a trailer that does the same, except in rhyme -- you're probably under the impression that Huntsman Part Deux is a prequel to that first movie. This would explain why Stewart herself is nowhere to be found in it. (There is, of course, another explanation.)

Weirdly, though, Huntsman actually isn't a prequel. Its first half hour does take place mostly before Snow White's birth, giving origin stories for its title figure and a new character, Emily Blunt's Evil Elsa -- er, Freya the Ice Queen.

But about half an hour in, there's an abrupt seven-year time jump. Suddenly, the prequel has become a sequel in which an absent Snow (we do see the back of her head at one point) tasks the Huntsman with tracking down the Magic Mirror before Freya can get her hands on it. Why does everyone want the damn mirror so much? Because... reasons, okay?

His quest for the One Ring -- er, the mirror -- takes up the majority of the movie's running time, which you also wouldn't know from those terrifically misleading trailers. Maybe Huntsman is being advertised this way because Emily Blunt and Charlize Theron's Magical Bitchfight seems like a much more interesting movie than Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain Walk Through the Woods.

Given that -- and the fact that Theron, the only redeeming aspect of the series' first film, has significantly less screen time than Huntsman's other top-billed stars -- you might expect Huntsman to crash and burn.

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But the movie turns out to be surprisingly buoyant. Hemsworth is charming, even if Chastain (as his once and future lover) is stiffer than Freya's ice walls. The asides from their crew of comic-relief dwarf pals (Nick Frost, Rob Brydon, Sheridan Smith and Alexandra Roach) are often funny on purpose. And the queens' costumes are sumptuous, even if the film's CGI magic pales in comparison to the seamless animation of Disney's new Jungle Book.

Best of all, at any given moment, The Huntsman is thisclose to sliding into a sublime bit of ridiculousness -- and it gives in to that impulse just often enough. Choice selections from the notes I took while watching it: "The baby is... on fire?"; "rope bridge into goblin town;" "can he talk to moose?"; "why does Charlize want to f*ck everything she sees?" 

If reading things like that doesn't make you want to see this movie, well, I can't help you develop a sense of humor. All I can say is that unlike Snow White helmer Rupert Sanders, Huntsman director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan seems to know exactly what kind of movie he's making.

Yes, it's an overly busy blockbuster that shamelessly borrows from dozens of better-known and better-loved properties -- the Lord of the Rings movies, The Hunger Games, Frozen, Game of Thrones and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, most egregiously.

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But it also manages to synthesize its various influences into a suitably entertaining whole. That's no small feat when you consider similar projects that couldn't manage to do the same thing (Disney's live-action Alice in Wonderland, Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood) -- and Huntsman gets a major boost from Theron, whose every appearance pushes the proceedings to the highest heights of glorious camp.

Put it this way: The movie wraps, as is customary, with an ending that leaves an (inexplicable) window open for a possible sequel. Normally in a film like this, that feels like a threat.

Here, though, it's more of a promise: "Like what you just saw? Well, buckle up, because we're prepared to do it all again. And maybe next time, there'll be like, dragons and sh*t."

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