Within the first pages of the first Lemony Snicket book you
pick up the author warns the readers to put the book down, for the stories
contained within the pages of the book describe horrible things that are about
to happen to our main characters (who happen to be children), and they are not
for the faint of heart. Of course, the
books are written to target children specifically, and what kid is going to say
no to an invitation like that? The
marketing is brilliant when you think of it.
The sales-pitch didn’t work so well for the film adaptation “Lemony
Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events,” which stars Jim Carrey as the
villainous Count Olaf and spends almost two hours torturing our lead
characters. After the film’s failure people
spent lots of time trying to figure out if the source material was simply too
cruel to sell to a family audience.
At first I was inclined to agree, except that recently the
franchise was revived as a TV series on Netflix, where families have no only
embraced the darkness of the premise, but have even found the series delightful
despite it. So, what happened? Why does this film version not work where the
TV version does? Should we compare the
two to find our answer? Actually, there
is no reason to compare the two, because the movie itself clues us in on all
the reasons why. It’s not that the
material is dark, but that it isn’t dark enough. Though Lemony Snicket is our humble narrator,
he simply describes what is happening on screen rather than playing with his
verbal superiority that the audience likely doesn’t have. The Baudelaire children are all likable and
we want them to win, but after being passed from one legal guardian to the
next, we start to tire of the moving.
This is a movie that captures us with an interesting
premise, a strong lead performance by Carrey, and then continues to go around
in circles where even an appearance by Meryl Streep can’t save us. Without comparing the two mediums, it should
be noted that “A Series of Unfortunate Events” works as a book series more
because of the witty verbiage to be found by the author, who teases the
audience with his knowledge of sentences and phrases that were years beyond the
target audience. This may be why many
teachers recommended the novels to families despite the dark material: because
it taught them the English language in a way that was fun and inventive without
being preachy. The movie, in contrast,
is unlikely to inspire much for film makers.
There is a look to all this that is unique, but it is never charming,
and, for me, I found much of it to be dreary.
Maybe it was to match the terrible things that were happening, but it almost adds insult to injury. Now we have the TV series, which is I think this belongs. The audience can take breaks between the bad things that happen and the episodic nature of the storytelling doesn’t have to be so apparent. “Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events” one probably one of Nickelodeon’s more ambitious efforts in regards to their theatrical releases, but I think the material was the film’s own worst enemy. It is never as clever as it wants to be nor depressing enough as it needs to. It tries to find a middle ground that was never going to be solid enough to hold the weight of the ambitions the film makers likely had when putting this together. Ultimately, a series of unfortunate events probably kept this from being what it needed to be…which is disappointing but somehow fitting at the same time.
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, there is some minor language as well as the whole dark mood of the subject matter, but it is rarely to the point where it is disturbing or scary so...make of that what you will. Recommended for ages 8 and up.
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