Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

I actually really regret watching this movie before I finished my review for the TV series...

I really don't remember watching this movie as a kid back in 2004 but I'm also pretty certain that I saw it in theaters. But I also thought while I was watching the Netflix series that I remember this movie being contained to just the first book and therefore I was confused how the Netflix show worked having almost mini movies of each book when this one didn't. And then I watched the film again today and I was very, very wrong.

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events follows the story of 3 children by the name of The Baudelaire's who are orphaned when their parents perish in a fire. The three children are Violet (played by Emily Browning) who likes to invent things, Klaus (played by Liam Aiken) who likes to read books, and their baby sister Sunny (played by Kara and Shelby Hoffman) who likes to bite things.

The Baudelaire Orphans are quickly sent away to live with a new guardian. They are taken by a banker by the name of Mr. Poe (played by Timothy Spall) and brought to their closest (closest as in relative distance) living relative, Count Olaf (played by Jim Carrey).

And this is the part that makes me really regret watching this after I watched the TV show.

Good lord is Jim Carrey creepy in this role.

If you read my review of the TV series, you'll know that I actually have very little recollection of this film and the only thing I really remembered prior to re-watching it was how closely Jim Carrey resembled Count Olaf from the book. And he does for sure! That's actually one of the plus's of this movie that they did stick to the style of the artwork from the books. Besides the fact that Klaus doesn't wear glasses... not sure why they skipped that, the sets, the costumes, and Jim Carrey, all look like the artwork seen in the books.

However... Jim Carrey is really phoning in this role.

The structure of the movie is a lot different than the structure of the show because contrary to what I thought, this movie doesn't stay on one book, it took the first three books and smashed them together into one narrative that doesn't make a lot of sense.

On top of that, the funny parts of Count Olaf is that he has a bunch of disguises that he does to fool the adults but the children of course see right through.

With the first three books being smashed into one movie you get to see more characters for Jim Carrey to play and every single choice made is wrong. I don't want to compare to the TV show, I want this movie to be judged on it's own merits, but when Neil Patrick Harris does the role, he has a very different costume on, he's doing funny things with his voice, and his dialogue and actions are funny.

Carrey just changes his voice and costume, which is not enough. All his characters just sound like The Grinch and his dialogue really isn't funny... like at all.

He has these long winded jokes that just keep going on... and on... and on... and on... and they don't get any funnier as the show goes on. I mean he is Jim Carrey so there are a couple of lines he delivers that got a cheap chuckle out of me, but overall it was just a weird performance. This was 4 years after How The Grinch Stole Christmas and it's obvious that Carrey was still being sucked dry of all the movement and voice humor that he exhibited in that film.

The thing that the TV show did right was they made the show Neil Patrick Harris's show and allowed him to do a lot of funny things with the character. This show just seems like it's billing Carrey by the hour and they want to focus more on the children. And this movie suffers the same way the show does.

These children are as dull as rocks.

Now I get it, the story is called A Series of Unfortunate Events. The whole joke is that these kids have just a miserable childhood and this isn't supposed to be funny... but it is. But I actually really felt bad for these kids and not in a way that humor comes out of pain. These kids either look bored or just melancholy the entire time and there is no uplifting aspects about them. They aren't funny, they aren't even likeable, they just kind of stare and do the things that they're known for. Violet's only character trait is that she's into inventing things. Klaus's only thing is that he likes to read. The closest thing to a character trait was Sunny and she didn't get nearly as many funny lines as they gave her in the series.

On top of all of that, because this movie is three stories smashed into one, we don't get enough time to really get to know these children because they're being thrown from one place to another and we barely get any time for them to form any relationships with anybody or for us to form a relationship with them.

But on top of all that!

Jim Carrey's lack of humor in this movie just comes off as creepy and diabolical.

While Neil Patrick Harris does play Count Olaf as diabolical, he's also incredibly dense and he's the kind of villain that you love to hate.

Again, a lot of it is based off the physical and vocal humor provided by Jim Carrey, but when he's not given a script with funny lines, he instead just flounders with strange choices of voices. And while he does the diabolical elements of Count Olaf well, without those light hearted and humor moments included in the script, he just comes off as a creepy diabolical uncle who is preying on a 14 year old girl, not just for her fortune... but for other things.

And yeah, I could make the joke about that's not that far off for Jim Carrey...

I'll just leave this here...

Now I do have to make mention that the set of the movie, while pretty washed out and very reminiscent of a Tim Burton movie, but not the good kind, they are pretty stylized in a unique way. But because they're so washed out, because there is no life to them, it feeds into the rest of the atmosphere of the film where it seems to be taking itself WAY too seriously.

Again, I regret watching this after watching the Netflix series because I can't help but compare the two and while both are adventure films centered around the Baudelaire orphans, the movie takes itself way too seriously and is trying to make itself more like Harry Potter when this isn't Harry Potter. Harry Potter works because it's an adventure film that has magical elements settled into it to keep it light hearted and whimsical.

There is nothing whimsical about this film and it felt way too much like a Hot Topic Customer's wetdream as opposed to a fun adventure.

This criticism actually applies to the books because from what I remember of them and just how those stories are structured in general, there are a lot of flaws and not so great narratives within it. The narratives are pretty elementary because the books were directed at a younger reading audience.

Like I said, the story takes itself way too seriously with how silly and over the top Daniel Handler (the real author of the book using the pen name Lemony Snicket) intended it to be. I don't know if he really intended for the story to be as self aware as the Netflix show is, but for some reason it just worked better.

Speaking of Lemony Snicket. He is played by Jude Law in this film and the movie shows him in a shaded silhouette the entire time, he still provides the narration for the story. This ties into the just overall tone of the movie because Snicket narrates this story like it's a fairy tale and the unique and creative writing of Daniel Handler just feels out of place when its read with Jude Law's smooth voice.

I think if this movie had taken it's time a little bit more and focused an entire movie on just one book instead of combining three and rushing from plot to plot, this might have actually worked. A lot of Carrey's work is improvised and while I don't think it totally worked, if they had just focused on one story and not been rushing Carrey out the door to the next scene, I don't think it would have been that horrible of movie.

I mean they've got the talent. The kids were up and coming stars at the time, they got Jim Carrey and Bill Connelly in some fun roles. I thought it was interesting that Catherine O'Hara played a role in this movie and ended up playing a role in the Netflix series as well...

And holy crap they got Meryl Streep for this film? Wow... Way to go Dreamworks.

There's a lot of good things going for this film but it's just executed in a weird way that doesn't fit the tone of the story.

And I've said it a couple times but I really regret watching this after the series.

As you've probably noticed already, I enjoyed the series a lot more than I enjoyed the movie and I spent the entire review basically comparing the two when that's not exactly fair.

But more than that, I did mention that there are a couple of things that do work for this film and those parts are amplified by the bad parts and suddenly I am getting the two confused.

I almost feel like I want to go back and watch the series again to get the bad taste of the movie out of my mouth because I really didn't enjoy this film.

This movie was a minor success back in 2004 and there were hopes to adapt the following books but it took too much time to get a green light as the children outgrew the role. And I'm really glad that it happened that way.

Barry Sonnenfeld was going to direct this film but ended up dropping out and became an Executive Producer on it. As it turns out, he ended up directing the Netflix series and it's actually kind of interesting seeing how things could have been in that film.

But now we have, from what I can gather, a pretty successful Netflix series and we can just forget about the weird creepy antics of Jim Carrey and this movie that had a lot of potential but ultimately fell flat.

But those are my thoughts on Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I think I may be all ASUE'd out at this point as this story has basically taken up my entire weekend. But I want to know your thoughts. What did you prefer? The movie or the Netflix show? What did you take issue with? I want to know because I'm sure there's a side of this from people who have read the book and can give me a better concept of what I missed. Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me you requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and review coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. Minor spoiler (not a whole lot though), this is the last song at the end of the Netflix Season 1 and it gives a good culminating atmosphere check for the entire season. I'm actually really looking forward to the second season, but for now, Enjoy!