Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Synopsis: After their parents die in a fire at the family home, the Baudelaire children become the Baudelaire orphans. Suddenly destitute, they are shuffled from one relative to another, pursued all the while by the Dickensian Count Olaf (Jim Carrey). The Count wants only one thing: to get his hands on the Baudelaire fortune. And he will stop at nothing to get it.

Lemony Snicket, bestselling author of 'A Series of Unfortunate Events', sums up the plight of the Baudelaire children with these ominous words: ‘Of all the people in the world who have miserable lives – and, as I’m sure you know, there are quite a few - the Baudelaire youngsters take the cake, a phrase which here means that more horrible things have happened to them than just about anybody.’ A big claim, perhaps, but in the realm of children’s literature, he’s right: Captain Hook has nothing on Count Olaf when it comes to a body count. It was this macabre sensibility that attracted Nickelodeon to 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' in the first place, as the producers relished the idea of adapting the story into a children’s film. So why doesn’t the adaptation work?

Whilst the three children, Violet (Emily Browning), Klaus (Liam Aiken) and Sunny (played by twins Kara and Shelby Hoffman) perfectly capture both the pathos and resourcefulness of Lemony Snicket’s characters, they are shackled to a cast of adults who seem unable to forget they’re performing. When an infant is more convincing in portraying complex emotions than Meryl Streep there’s something wrong with the film’s direction, a fact that is never clearer than when Jim Carrey is on screen. Given carte blanche with his character, he returns to the hammy impersonations and Jerry Lewis-style physical comedy that made him a star, his tedious antics undermining the menace that makes Count Olaf’s character so appealing in the books.

Poor performances can be forgiven if the story works, but here – again – the filmmakers have squandered an opportunity. Rather than concentrating on fully realising the first book in the series, they have attempted to blend three books into one story. Not surprisingly, what is gained in breadth is lost in depth, as small but crucial moments are sacrificed for events with more visual appeal. Combined with the disproportionate amount of screen time dedicated to Count Olaf, there are some very slow spots in the film, and other places where events move so quickly that engaging with particular characters and situations is impossible. Somebody needs to tell the filmmakers that the story does not consist of events alone.

There are, however, some notable exceptions to this series of unfortunate choices: Rick Heinrichs, Oscar-winning production designer of Sleepy Hollow, manages to perfectly capture the books’ sense of ‘timelessness’, giving the film a rich, gothic quality of which Baudelaire himself would be proud, while Thomas Newman’s score is appropriately haunting.

Overall, this isn’t a great adaptation, and considering what the production team had to work with it’s unfortunate, a word which here means wasted potential. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

 

 

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