A fascinatingly controversial animated flop finds favor on Netflix

The animated family film isn’t exactly the sort of genre that typically drums up any sort of notable controversy, when lighthearted romps designed to keep children occupied for a couple of hours tend to offer nothing but light, breezy, and altogether fluffy entertainment.

However, Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs is a notable outlier, and not just because you may not have even heard of the movie before. That’s curious in itself, given that the South Korean effort is an amalgamation of classic tales Snow White by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes, which featured Chloë Grace Moretz, Sam Claflin, Gina Gershon, Patrick Warburton, and Nolan North among the voice cast.

The plot is a simple one, following seven princes who find themselves turned into dwarfs, sending them out on a search for the most beautiful girl in the world in an effort to free them from the curse, all while Snow White finds the titular footwear and finds out they’ve got magical powers of their own.

A 40% Rotten Tomatoes score and box office haul of just under $10 million makes it clear we’re not talking about a classic, but star Moretz absolutely incinerated Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs during the buildup.

The earliest stages of the marketing push came under heavy criticism for body-shaming, and after the actress said she was “appalled” by the message being put across, production company Locus Corporation issued a public apology and terminated the campaign with immediate effect.

All that for a movie that almost instantly slipped through the cracks, never to be heard from again. Then again, Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs has entered Netflix’s global most-watched list as per FlixPatrol, so maybe a resurgence is on the cards.