Movies
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
An amalgam of three of Daniel Handler's children's books under the pen name of Lemony Snicket (Jiminy Cricket! what a monicker!), here impersonated in voice and in silhouette by Jude Law. The setting is an amalgam as well: Charles Addams Gothic and Edward Gorey Edwardiana infiltrated with modern conveniences such as cars with telephones, and verbal anachronisms such as "This place could use a little TLC." The grand total, the small sum, is a sort of mock-Dickens to do with three orphaned siblings and their nefarious guardian, Count Olaf (Jim Carrey, piling two additional disguises, a slimy herpetologist and a salty sea captain, on top of his initial disguise as a hook-nosed ham actor with Bride-of-Frankenstein hair). The movie starts out with a just-kidding animated feature called The Little Elf, and our author/narrator, after its abrupt interruption, cautions us solemnly that the movie we are about to see instead is "extremely unpleasant," and he gives us leave to go elsewhere for our entertainment: "It's not too late to see a film about a happy little elf." But oh yes, it is. In the opening decade of the 21st Century, it is most definitely too late. The "dark" children's film we are now obliged to put up with -- ironic, cynical, facetious, factitious, forced, and jaded -- takes excessive pride in its trendy conventionality and its stout opposition to forces long since decimated. With Liam Aiken, Emily Browning, Timothy Spall, Billy Connolly, and Meryl Streep; directed by Brad Silberling. 2004.
— Duncan Shepherd
Reader Rating:
- MPAA Rating: PG
I'm puzzled as to why Mr. Shepherd considers the world-seen-thru-a-childlike-mind antics of Pee Wee's Big Adventure worthy of four stars, but this Halloween flipside earns no more than a bullet --- the Series of Unfortunate Events are not that dissimilar to Pee Wee's dark roadtrip dealings with the Alamo, violent biker bars, enraged spouses, and even a ghostly trucker named Large Marge, whose haggard visage and revelatory/celebratory name would be perfectly at home in the Snicket universe.
The Lemony DVD includes an inventive and amusing commentary by Jim Carrey, remaining in character as the book's original author - as the movie unspools its Tim Burton-esque tale, he grows increasingly distressed and horrified at what the filmmakers have done to his story -----
By jayallen 1:23 p.m., Jul 27, 2010 > Report it