Entertainment

This is Snow White?

Charlize Theron’s evil Queen Ravenna is deliciously campy in the flawed but fun epic “Snow White and the Huntsman.”

This year’s second revisionist take on the Brothers Grimm classic, “Snow White and the Huntsman’’ is a visual treat with some expertly staged (if bloodlessly PG-13) battle scenes.

It’s a decided improvement on the wretched “Mirror Mirror,’’ but fails to realize the full potential of its ambitiously dark vision.

Filtering the timeless fairy tale through the prism of “The Lord of the Rings,’’ “Star Wars’’ and countless other film fantasies, it reinvents Snow (a miscast Kristen Stewart) as a warrior princess who launches a battle to reclaim her kingdom from Queen Ravenna (a campy but effective Charlize Theron).

PHOTOS: ‘TWILIGHT’ STARS IN OTHER FILMS

Ravenna kills Snow’s widowed father on their wedding night, then imprisons the princess for a decade in a castle tower. The queen sends for her stepdaughter when she learns from the Magic Mirror that consuming her heart will give her immortality, but Snow manages to escape.

The queen’s magical powers do not extend to the Dark Forest, where Snow has taken flight, so she enlists the burly huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) — whose parents were apparently so poor they couldn’t afford to give him a name — to track her down, promising to resurrect his late wife.

The closest this version comes to a prince is a hunky cipher of a baron’s son (Sam Claflin), who completes a half-hearted imitation of the “Twilight’’ love triangle once Snow and the huntsman vanquish the queen’s delightfully oily, albino-ish brother (Sam Spruell).

There are eight, not seven, dwarves this time around, and not the lovable ones from Disney — they’re drunken thieves closer to the Grimms’ original vision, and most of them could be correctly described as Grouchy.

In the biggest misstep, the (underused) dwarves are digitally reduced versions of normal-size, mostly British character actors, who include Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost, Toby Jones and Eddie Marsan.

Snow White’s eventual triumph may be preordained, but acting-wise, it’s really no contest between Stewart and Theron.

Nobody’s idea of “the fairest in the land,’’ the faintly bruised-looking Stewart brings her familiar disaffected and scowling persona to the character. While Stewart does crack a faint smile on occasion, her Snow could use a far more ethereal touch, especially when she’s interacting with the film’s special-effects version of nature.

She looks great suited up in armor like Joan of Arc, though.

Greatly abetted by Colleen Atwood’s awe-inspiring costumes, and by effects that turn her into a flock of ravens and what resembles a pool of tar, Theron makes a feast of Ravenna’s lust for eternal youth.

Debuting director Rupert Sanders delivers eye candy by the carload.

It’s often like watching reels of Ridley Scott, Peter Jackson and George Lucas’ greatest hits, and Snow’s final assault on the queen’s castle definitely may make this a hit.

But to me, the nearly two preceding hours often feel like three, as the patchwork script keeps introducing characters and subplots and dropping them, all while rushing characters through eye-popping environments.

This flawed but entertaining epic is called “Snow White and the Huntsman,’’ but Hemsworth — who swings a double sword with considerably more brio than Thor’s hammer — often gets lost in the shuffle, until he’s needed for the climax.