Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

(Originally published 2004)

The best scenes in Brad Silberling's "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" revolve around Meryl Streep's Aunt Josephine, a once fearless woman who has, in her widowhood, become unreasonably fearful of all that surrounds her.

To the orphaned Baudelaire children - Klaus (Liam Aiken), Violet (Emily Browning) and toddler Sunny (Shelby and Kara Hoffman) - Aunt Josephine may be a bit weird given her unfounded fear of Realtors and her penchant for launching into paranoiac outbursts ("Watch the chandelier, children! If it falls, it will impale you!" "Come away from the refrigerator, darlings! If it falls, it will crush you flat!" "Watch out for those avocados! The pit could become lodged in your throats!")

Still, when it comes to finding a proper guardian willing to take them in, the Baudelaire children would take Aunt Josephine any day over the awful alternative, Count Olaf (Jim Carrey).

Evil and mincing, his body bent into harsh, ugly angles, this gruesome beast isn't interested in loving these children or rearing them. He's only interested in the wealth they inherited when their parents died in the fire that mysteriously consumed their mansion.

What's to become of the Baudelaires once Olaf has their fortune? Let's just say he won't be needing them, something Klaus, Violet and Sunny sense with growing dread as the story unfolds.

The film, which screenwriter Robert Gordon based on Daniel Handler's popular series of grim children's books, is lavishly produced and heavily stylized, a "Harry Potter" hopeful narrated by Jude Law, who is seen here only in silhouette. The movie remains true to its title. A series of unfortunate events do indeed befall these tots, with a few individual scenes so well produced, they're on par with anything in the Potter movies.

But "Lemony Snicket," as a whole, falls short of the Potter movies. Gone missing is the magic. The movie's self-conscious narration doesn't allow for a seamless slip into Handler's dark, dreary world; you feel as if you have been shoehorned into it, not transported, as you do in "Harry."

Also missing is the depth of character achieved in the Potter movies. The child actors in "Lemony" are fine, but their characters aren't especially memorable, with the exception of Sunny, whose ferocious bite and witty bon mots, revealed in title cards, allow her to take shape in the gloom. Otherwise, this is an unremarkable crowd, the lot of which have nothing on the lively spunk of Harry, Ron and Hermione.

Carrey also is a problem. His performance predictably favors camp, which prevents the movie from achieving the real chill it needed to be significant.

His Olaf is too much of a buffoon to be scary, too often going for laughs when a shot of real menace would have deepened the movie with the sense of peril it needed to succeed.

Grade: B-