Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)December 20th, 2004
LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Paramount Pictures/Nickelodeon Movies
Grade: B+
Directed by: Brad Silberling
Written by: Robert Gordon, book by Daniel Handler
Cast: Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, Jude Law, Emily Browning, Liam Aiken
Screened at: Loews 34th St., NYC, 12/19/04
Classic fairy tales are full of violence and cruelty. In Grimm's "Hansel and Gretel," a kindly old woman with a house of bread who entices children into her doughy abode is actually an evil witch who bakes the kids that fall into her custody. In "Little Red Riding Hood" a wolf succeeds in gobbling down a grandma and comes close to the giving the title character no chance to reach adulthood. Cinderella's mother and stepsisters are dysfunctional to a T, ganging up because of jealousy against the pretty girl who must tend to their cinders instead of going to the ball.
It's not surprising, then, that "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" received a PG rating, meaning pretty much that kids of all ages would not be traumatized by the subject matter of this creative film. One particular character, the villain (played by Jim Carrey in a role with which he is obviously having great fun), has some pretty violent aims and, if taken seriously could theoretically have afforded the movie an R rating. In one scenario, he seeks to kill three lovable children. In another, he seeks–and succeeds in–marrying a fourteen- year-old girl. In yet another scene, he is responsible for the violent death of the children's aunt. In addition he misrepresents himself to a court in order to gain custody over the youngsters he's determined to finish off. and gets a clueless bureaucrat to believe that he is the right person to take care of the three kids. Yet while at least one critic (Kirk Honeycut of The Hollywood Reporter) believes that making the villainy cartoonish warrants a thumbs-down from him for the entire story, a more literal projection of the evil fellow would likely scare anyone in the audience under the age of ten–not that this would be such a terrible thing.
The movie does not follow the typical Hollywood trajectory in that the story does not build to an inevitable climax but is rather, as the title suggests, a one-thing-after-another series of scenes, one projecting more misfortune than the next. As narrated with a richly poetic and ironic vocabulary by Jude Law, the story opens with the untimely death by fire of the parents of the rich Baudelaire children: Violet (Emily Browning), Klaus (Liam Aiken) and the infant Sunny (Kara Hoffman and Shelby Hoffman). The orphans are picked up by a government official, Mr. Poe (Timothy Spall), and transported to their closest relative–which in Poe's limited mind means those who live geographically nearest to the unhappy children. Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) is at first considered merely eccentric, given his gothic home design and sinister gestures, though soon enough, when Olaf places his automobile on railroad tracks, exits, and locks the doors on the kids, the children are certain that he intends to kill them and bilk them of their inheritance. The children are transferred to the custody of their Uncle Monty (an unusually restrained Billy Connolly that belies the actor's comic gifts), while upon Monty's death they are handed over to their Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep), whose obsession with correct grammar could make her a figure of horror to any schoolchild. When Josephine is put out of her misery at the hands of the count, Olaf discovers that he is not in line to receive any inheritance unless he marries one of the youngsters (presumably Violet), coming into the great wealth when Violet would herself mysteriously die.
Rick Heinrichs's production design is as smashing as anything that Tim Burton's crew has ever put out–filled with creaky Victorian houses, some full of scary snakes, others–namely in Josephine's home–loaded with furniture which itself scares the hapless aunt as seriously as does bad grammar. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki adds to the gothic look of the enterprise, using inconspicuous colors, pretty much the opposite of what we've come to expect of Nickelodeon productions. Carey, virtually unrecognizable, delivers cartoonish chills as the balding count while Liam Aiken and Emily Browning have perfect sibling chemistry with each other. Director Brad Silberling has great fun with scripter Robert Gordon's anachronisms: though the ambience is that of Victorian England, the automobile sitting ominously on the railroad tracks possess remote-controlled buttons which Olaf uses to seal the kids within and at one point mentions that he can be reached by fax. The film could have been more fun if Billy Connolly, one of the funniest guys in the movies, was given his head, but all in all, as holiday fare "Lemony Snicket" has the sinister edge that puts it well over bland and humor-challenged fare like "Christmas with the Kranks."
Rated PG. 107 minutes. © 2004 by Harvey Karten
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