A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Date Viewed: 12/27/04

Details:

Jim Carrey (Count Olaf)

Meryl Streep (Aunt Josephine)

Jude Law (Lemony Snicket, narrator)

Emily Browning (Violet Baudelaire)

Liam Aiken (Klaus Baudelaire)

The Hoffman twins (Sunny)

Timothy Spall (Mr. Poe)

Billy Connolly (Uncle Monty)

Catherine O'Hara (Justice Strauss)

Director: Brad Silberling

Score: 1/2

The Review: Odd; uneven; a bit bizarre; not to everyone's taste -- almost like Jim Carrey himself.

Taken from the plot threads of the first three of Daniel Handler's series of children's novels narrated by Lemony Snicket: The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window. The basic idea sounds like a downer: two children and an infant are orphaned by a fire that kills their parents and destroys their home. They then are bounced around from relative to relative (sort of) by a clueless guardian, a neverending series of changes necessitated by a continuing series of unfortunate events (think Al Capp's character Joe Btfsplk, but with a much larger cloud covering multiple children). Their first encounter with a nearby relative ("...just because he lives five blocks away does not make him our nearest relative...") is Count Olaf (Carrey), and he insinuates himself from that point on.

For all this negativity and darkness, the stories are filled with wit and humor, and present the children's character traits of creativity, ingenuity and reading in quite positive light. But it's obvious these are not your standard children's books, and they are not entitled "Happy Endings." If you haven't read these yourselves or encountered them via your kids, then search out and read the commentary/review by Ada R. Erickson at Amazon's web-page for an excellent introduction, rationale and apologia. One conceit (or cinematographic advantage?) of the movie version is providing sub-titles for Sunny, the infant who cannot yet speak English, but whose utterings and trenchant commentary are understood by the Baudelaire children.

Surprisingly (since I'm a bit sensitive to this), the movie does not come across as yet another rendition of the Book of Job; the mood, intent, style and humor of these unfortunate events is entirely different from Job -- for which, hoorah!

A few uncredited cameos, including one by Dustin Hoffman.

(1-Jan-05)

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