The deafening anti-buzz surrounding Disney’s latest “live-action” remake of one of their animated properties (the 1937 title Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) is not only justified, it actually underestimated just how toe-curlingly terrible the film would turn out to be.

Starring a simpering Rachel Zegler in the title role and Gal Gadot as a cardboard cutout of the Evil Queen, this is a bamboo-splinters-under-the-fingernails viewing experience. It’s not so much the clumsy attempts to defuse the political insensitivity of the original cartoon that sinks the movie. The problems are more fundamental, starting with the fact that this is one of the ugliest things I have ever seen: it has the look of an AI-created migraine and is awash with sentiments so sappy that you rather wish the huntsman would just get over his moral scruples and put us all out of our collective misery. A film made by people with cartoon dollar signs for eyes and not even the tiniest glimmer of art in their souls.

• In UK and Irish cinemas