I am sorry to inform you that this review is not from the Top 1000 greatest films of all time, nor is it from a happy occasion such as my dear mother's birthday. Rather this is a review of the movie, a word which here means, a group of moving pictures stitched together for the purposes of entertainment, A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004.) The subject matter of the movie is not happy and whilst it is my duty to review it, it is not your duty to read it. Upon watching this film, I became miserable and distraught - words that here mean, so sad and upset that I am currently crying onto my keyboard, I do not wish for you, dear reader, to undergo the same heartbreak, so please read my reviews of Love Actually and Run Fatboy Run, or better yet watch the films themselves, as they are far happier than this melancholy tale. This is your Very Final Dire warning to click off this review and watch a funny cat video.
A Series of Unfortunate Events is a children's book series that was written by Lemony Snicket - which as I'm sure you know is the penname of Daniel Handler who was the real author - and it remains one of my favourite book series. This was why I was ecstatic to find out that they would be making a Netflix TV Series. However, this review is not of the TV series, rather this review is of the film that preceded - a word which here means, came before - it. Some comparisons of the two may sneak in, but any in-depth commentary will be saved for another time. The film adapts the first three books: The Bad Beginning, the Reptile Room and the Wide Window.
A Series of Unfortunate Events focuses on Violet (Emily Browning,) Klaus (Liam Aikens) and Sunny Baudelaire (Kara and Shelby Hoffman.) Violent is 14 and an inventor, Klaus is 12 and a lover of reading and researching and Sunny is an infant with very sharp teeth, which satisfy her love for biting things. They experience a great tragedy - a word which here means, a terrible fire destroys their home, killing their parents - leaving them in the temporary care of Mr Poe (Timothy Spall.) Mr Poe is a banker and executor of Baudelaire estate.
The Baudelaire's parents have left behind a great fortune that Violet will inherit when she turns 18, but until then, it will remain in Mr Poe's care. Although, Mr Poe is well-meaning, he is incompetent - a phrase which here means, having a good heart, but being unable to listen to common sense and not put the Baudelaire orphans in the care of the Villainously Fiendish Devil, Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) who wants nothing more than to steal away the Baudelaire's fortune. After the orphans are taken out of his care, they are then entrusted to Dr. Montgomery Montgomery (Billy Connolly) and then Aunt Josephine Anwhistle (Meryl Streep.)
I am by no means, a book purist, - a phrase which here means, somebody who is such a big fan of a book, that they insist that the movie adaptation has to be identical, I realise that books have to be changed to make them suitable for the big screen. I acknowledge that there are some films which are just as good or even better than their source material:
the Lord of Rings, Life of Pi and
The Godfather, and there are some books that are far superior than their movie adaptations:
the Harry Potter series, The Beach, Stormbreaker and
Hannibal. However, when you love a book series, as much as I love
A Series of Unfortunate Events, it is disappointing when the movie adaptation doesn't live up to it. And as much as the film is a good film in its own right, it does not compare to the books.
Before I become a Harbinger of Doom, - a phrase which here means, a grumpy critic who likes to pull apart a popular and well-loved film - I would like to say a few things about the film that I did like. Firstly, there was the performances. Other than Jim Carrey, whom I'll come to later, I thought that the acting was all good. Timothy Spall was great as the inept Mr Poe, and Billy Connolly played the eccentric Dr Montgomery Montgomery with charm, but I think it was Meryl Streep's portrayal of Aunt Josephine, which was the most faithful to the books. Until I rewatched this film, I don't think I've ever realised just how tragic of a character she is. In her youth, she used to be very adventurous, but upon the death of her husband, she has become afraid of everything and lost all joy in her life. I think it could all be too easy to dislike or tire of a character like this, but Streep makes the character pitiful and quite sympathetic at times.
One of my favourite moments of the film - a phrase which means, a part of the film that I enjoyed the most - was right at the end, where Mr Poe confronts Count Olaf denouncing him as a greedy monster. Count Olaf replies that it is actually Mr Poe who is the monster, as he refused to listen to the Baudelaires, due to the fact that they are children. A big theme of the books is the idea of obedience to adult authority and how children's opinions are of no importance, and I think it's great that the film portrayed this theme so well.
Although, the movie tried, I don't think that it conveyed the character of Lemony Snicket (Jude Law) well. In the books, Lemony Snicket is far more than just the narrator/writer of the series. He is a character in himself, often inserting himself into the scenes, and breaking the fourth wall - a phrase which here means speaking directly to the reader - through either defining difficult words to the reader (a device which often appears within the story too,) dissecting popular expressions or literary devices or giving Variously Funny Descriptions of different events in his life. This provides a lot of the series' humour, but this didn't translate into the film. The film begins with an animated short of a ghastly creation called
The Happiest, Little Elf, which is quickly cut short and replaced by Snicket begging the viewer to leave the theatre and not to watch
A Series of Unfortunate Events. There are also a few occasions, where Snicket verbatim - a phrase which here means word for word - explains what certain phrases mean, but Snicket is mostly reduced to a narrator sitting in a clocktower, thus losing a lot of his presence and effect. Lemony Snicket is a character which is in every way, just as interesting and important as the Baudelaires and I don't like how his role was so diminished in the film. Not only does the film lose some of the depth that the books have, but it also loses some of the great deadpan humour.
I thought Jim Carey was very over-the-top as Count Olaf going so far to render him as a Pantomime villain. This resulted in the character's dilution and a considerable loss of menace. I get that Count Olaf is supposed to be a talentless actor, but I think that Carey overdid it. I also didn't like the portrayal of his theatre troupe who far from being threatening henchmen in their own right were reduced to little more than stage props and dressing.
Another scene I had a big problem with was when Count Olaf locks the Baudelaire children in his car and leaves it on a set of train tracks with an oncoming train only minutes away. Obviously he does this to kill them and thus steal their fortune, yet this was a stupid idea, hurting Olaf's portrayal as an intelligent villain. Olaf's intelligence is demonstrated through this film via his costumes and his Vicious Fetid Diabolical schemes to steal the Baudelaire's fortune. He is intelligent enough to know that if he kills the Baudelaires, then he won't get a cent of their money.
My biggest problem with this film is how it compresses three books into one film meaning that everything is very rushed and some important details are sacrificed in the name of pacing and relevance. It also hurts the Baudelaire's character development too. From the offset, we see that they are talented and intelligent, using their skills to get them out of harm's way. Yet in the film, this is substituted for luck and coincidence.
For example, in the Bad Beginning section, Count Olaf orders the Baudelaires to cook dinner for him and his theatre troupe. They find a cookbook in his kitchen, which is a bit odd, considering how he doesn't have a strainer or cooking pot, and cook Pasta Puttanesca - a phrase which here means, a delicious Italian pasta dish consisting of anchovies, olives and garlic, cooked in a gorgeous tomato based sauce. In the book, the Baudelaires visit their neighbour Justice Strauss (Catherine O'Hara) and borrow one of her cook books, where they discover the Puttanesca recipe. By changing this, the film undermines how the Baudelaires use their initiative to help them.
Another example of this would be in the Reptile Room section, where after the Incredibly Deadly Viper is framed for biting and killing Dr Montgomery Montgomery, Sunny proves that there isn't anything dangerous about it by playing with it. However, due to the rushed nature, there is no earlier scene, where we see Sunny become friends with the snake, as there is in the book. Also there isn't any evidence of Klaus using his researching skills to discover that it was actually Count Olaf, disguised as a research assistant Stephano, who killed Dr Montgomery Montgomery by injecting him with the venom of the Mamba Du Mal, nor is there a scene of Violet inventing a picklock to break into Stephano's suitcase to find evidence.
Despite how the film cuts out a lot, it includes some interesting subplots, most notably the fact that the Baudelaire's parents, Dr Montgomery Montgomery and Aunt Josephine all knew each other in a past life. This is presented in the Wide Window section, where Aunt Josephine hints that they were all part of a secret organisation. Obviously, she is referring to how they were on the volunteer side of V.F.D, but, and I reach out to any eagle-eyed reader, was this in the books at all? It makes perfect sense if it is, but I found no evidence about it when I reread the novels. Please let me know in the comments below. Also be sure to keep a lookout for a couple of the very subtle nods to V.F.D.
The Wide Window section ends with another deviation of the book, which makes little sense within the film. Count Olaf has adopted the guise of Captain Sham to gain the confidence of Aunt Josephine and force her into killing herself and leaving the Baudelaires in his care. She fakes her death, goes into hiding, and leaves a hidden message for the Baudelaires which they decipher and quickly rescue her. When they are sailing back across Lake Lachrymose and are being attacked by the Lachrymose Leeches, who should come rescue them, but Count Olaf. However, he has discarded his Captain Sham costume, which made no sense to me, as he had no reason to get rid of it. Nobody knew who he was. On a smaller note, if Aunt Josephine is a grammar-Nazi on steroids and Captain Sham speaks in "sea-dog" slang, why, oh why, would she become so attracted to him? This was something else that made no sense to me.
Anyway, soon joining Count Olaf and the Baudelaires on the lake is Mr Poe (I wasn't really sure why he was there either.) Count Olaf pretends to save Klaus from the leeches, which is enough to convince Mr Poe to put them back into his care, but not before saying that the Baudelaire fortune will not go to Olaf unless he is married to Violet, thus giving Olaf the idea to perform a play called the Marvellous Marriage, where he intends to marry Violet for real. However, his decision to put on this play seems very spontaneous, which contradicts - a word that here means doesn't make any sense compared to an earlier scene I am about to discuss - this earlier scene which I am about to discuss. If we remember back to the silly car/train scene, we see quite clearly that there is a book about Inheritance Law. If Olaf had this plan all along, then why did he wait so long to enact it? Again, I think this hurts his intelligence as a villain.
In terms of blackmailing Violet to marry him, Olaf has Sunny kidnapped, put in a cage and dangled out of a tall tower, with the threat that she would be dropped to her death, if anything went wrong with the production. The silly thing about this scene is how all of this happens off-screen. In the books, Olaf has one of his henchman sneak Sunny out of the Baudelaire's bedroom, but in the film, it comes as a complete surprise to Klaus and Violet to find their baby sister missing. Where did they think she had gone? Did they not notice that she was missing?
Finally, I really disliked the ending of the film, as it goes against the whole nature of the books. Throughout the series, Snicket lampoons the literary devices that make up a traditional children's story, most notably, how all the characters live happily ever after. This is a real story where the villains win and the heroes lose. However, the film ends with some sentimental, cheesy monologue, performed by Snicket himself, about how fortunate the Baudelaires are to have each other, and how in the darkest situations, there is always hope. This sentimentality is exactly what Snicket was writing against and contradicts the whole flavour of the film.
I know that my review of this film might seem a Vile Foul Diatribe, but it's only because I love the books so much and
a Series of Unfortunate Events fails to recapture its magic and wonder. It is a good film in its own right and I'm glad that I gave it a second chance. I'm also sure that non-readers of the book series will enjoy it, but it was nowhere near as good as it could have been. Unlike, the Netflix TV adaptation, which is far superior, but that is another review for another time. Until that time, dear reader, I wish you have a Very Fine Day, or at least a happier day than the Baudelaires generally experience.
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