Movie Reviews

A Series of Unfortunate Events is a combined film adaptation of the first three Lemony Snicket books, and perhaps as such, it felt to me just like it sounds: a series of somewhat unconnected and disjointed events.

The first Unfortunate Event occurs immediately prior to the start of the film, when the three Baudelaire children -- Violet, Klaus, and Sunny -- return home one day to find that their parents have died in a massive fire at their house. We're introduced to these three sad siblings and their unfortunate circumstances by a faceless narrator, Lemony Snicket (Jude Law), who observes that each of them sports a peculiar 'ability' (that will no-doubt come in handy throughout the film). Violet is a talented inventor, Klaus has the uncanny knack for remember whatever he's read, and the infant Sunny... well, she bites things.

The subsequent Events involve the Baudelaire children meeting and attempting to live with various long-lost relatives -- the first of which is the nefarious Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), a distant uncle of theirs whose interests lie not with the children, but with the fortune he might appropriate should the children 'accidentally' perish before they become of age. The children soon get wise to his motives, and are off to live with their next long-lost Uncle Monty (Billy Connolly), but when a disguised Olaf shows up again to screw them over, they move again to yet another relative, Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep). It's not long afterwards that the Count reappears.

Each of the various relatives are fairly interesting, with their own assorted humorous quirks, personalities, and histories. However, except in the loose sense that they're related to the Baudelaires, and that the last two (Monty and Josephine) are being harassed by the first (Olaf), there's no real connection among them. I would've likely preferred a film that focused on only one of the Baudelaire relations (more like the books, apparently), instead of the three that are in this one. Maybe the writers tried that, only to find that each relation couldn't carry enough material for a whole film, and instead just threw three of them into one movie to fill up space.

The film has a fair number of funny moments, but I wasn't too impressed with Jim Carrey's role (or roles, if you count the various disguised characters he plays). He was really hamming it up and going a little overboard, and it was a bit distracting watching Jim Carrey play Jim Carrey. Also in the 'Not-Really-That-Funny' category was the running joke of translating Sunny's toddler-speak "goo-goo's" and "ga-ga's" into witty remarks via subtitles.

Due to the popularity of the Lemony Snicket books, I imagine this franchise will be around for a while. I just hope that the next instalment is less of an unconnected Series of Unfortunate Events, and is more of a Cohesive Unfortunate Story (doesn't have quite the same ring to it though, doesn't it?).