Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

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After their parents perish in a suspicious house fire and they are left in desperate need of a guardian, the Baudelaire orphans battle to stay out of the clutches of the superbly talented, evil Count Olaf (that’s me, not Jim Carrey as some people will try to tell you). Violet (Emily Browning) uses her skills as an inventor, Klaus (Liam Aiken) his photographic memory of every book he’s ever read and baby Sunny her secret language in their attempts to foil my plan to get my hands on their enormous fortune.

Watch as the Baudelaire orphans are passed from snake mad Uncle Monty Montgomery (Billy Connolly) to fear stricken, Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep) as the naïve banker Mr Po (Timothy Spall) tries to find them a suitable home. Try as they might to escape me, every time, I’m one step ahead and their newfound happiness is ruined as I use my outstanding acting ability to outwit them all and keep the children (and their money) within my grasp. Will the Baudelaire orphans live happily ever after? Not if I can help it!

Let’s get one thing clear: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is a horror film. There is a serial killer, giant snakes, man-eating leaches and other horrible things. The atmosphere is eerie. Houses leak and creak. The sun never shines for more than a few seconds. The environment is bleak, lifeless and full of peril, and danger lurks around every turn.

Let’s get another thing clear. This is a children’s horror film. Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events preys on children’s worst fears. Loving parents die and are gone forever. Adult authority figures are unreliable, unobservant and lack any protective instincts. Children are whisked from place to place without any stability, and the only place they can call home is the burnt out vestige of their former house.

The film, based on three books from the wildly successful series, follows the adventures of the three talented Baudelaire children. When their parents perish in a fire, they are put in the care of the insidious Count Olaf. (Jim Carrey) Olaf, a self-proclaimed master thespian, is an odd villain. He’s after the family fortune, and torments the children with disguises and plans that the grown-ups around him can never quite spot.

Another point of clarity: Despite being a horror film, this movie comforts the audience. Films like Spy Kids and The Thunderbirds never let the audience worry, because they make danger seem exciting. But A Series of Unfortunate Events takes a different approach. Like the children’s literature of Roald Dahl and Mordecai Richter, A Series of Unfortunate Events recognizes that it’s okay to present scariness, gloominess and sadness, as long as you present strong, pure hearted children whose inherent cleverness cuts through it all.

The performances of Liam Aiken and Emily Browning as the two oldest Baudelaire children are just the thing to keep the audience brave. Aiken and Browning do not present children who are having fun, but children who remain strong. This is infinitely more comforting and believable.

Jim Carrey inserts his usual pantomime into the role of Count Olaf, along with some nice references to silent horror actors Lon Chaney and Max Schreck. But his Count is too unreal. The audience is too aware that they are watching Jim Carrey, instead of being terrified by Count Olaf. An innate actor like Gene Wilder might have been better suited.

Ultimately, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events succeeds as solid entertainment. Like Jeunet and Caro’s City of Lost Children, Brad Silberling and writer Robert Gordon embrace the fears of childhood, and create a pleasantly unpleasant adventure that allows us to revel in the objectionable

Welcome to the wicked world of Lemony Snicket, free of a troublesome happy ending and devoid of any sort of joy. It's a world where one bad thing happens after another, a veritable series of unfortunate events. And it's wonderfully executed, brilliantly cast and almost perfectly Potter-beating. If only it weren't for Jim Carrey...



With The Lord of The Rings now officially a part of cinematic history with the release of the final Extended Edition last week, and the next instalment of Harry Potter still warning of wet paint on its sets at Leavesden, there's a definite gap in the market for some good, solid fantasy on the big screen. And this is the candidate to fill the post - the first cinematic adaptation of Daniel Handler's prolific Lemony Snicket books (Snicket is Handler's pen-name).

The similarities, particularly with the Potter franchise, are hard to miss, although the story does its best to innovate: A series of books (eleven currently in print and thirteen in total - this film condenses the first three) tells of the adventures of the Baudelaire orphans, Klaus (a reader), Violet (an inventor), and Sunny (a biter), following the death of their parents in a fire at the family home. They find themselves plunged into a world they cannot control under the guardianship of a wicked relative who'd like nothing better than to tap into the hideous fortune their parents have left them.

But unlike those Fantasy stalwarts of recent years, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Event doesn't serve its treats easily. First off, there is no happy ending here but rather, as the title implies, simply a final unfortunate event. And, perhaps more importantly, there's Jim Carrey.

Distracting from everything that's good about this film and its source material, Carrey is Count Olaf, a devilishly wicked method-acting cousin of the Baudelaire orphans. Simply a nasty and horrible man in the books, Carrey perverts the character into his own comedic vision, delivering Ace Ventura with sillier hair or The Cable Guy without a lisp, depending on your persuasion. The man is given too much freedom to ad-lib and succeeds in removing any trace of danger from the character. The job of the orphans in escaping their tormentor is motivated here by annoyance, surely, for there is nothing threatening about Carrey's Olaf.

Carrey's character is, frustratingly, the crux of the film and, whether we like it or not, he turns up to spoil every episodic incident the film plays out. Liam Aiken and Emily Browning do fine jobs as the verbal Baudelaire orphans, Klaus and Violent, and baby Sunny's subtitled gurgles are hilariously funny when they aren't wallowing in cliché, but they're not trusted with the weight of the film and so the script is given over to Carrey as often as possible.

But the real genius is in Handler's stories and Robert Gordon's screenplay and Carrey relies on neither to craft his Olaf. He is the only distraction of an otherwise brilliant film.

But Carrey isn't representative of the rest of the adult cast. Billy Connoly never really works when he's given a script, but Meryl Streep is simply wonderful. As the Baudelaire's nervous and gun-shy Aunt Josephine, Streep brings the script to life and is given the funniest line of the piece. Her fear of realtors (a word which here means "estate agents" - you'll do well to keep that little Americanism in mind when you watch) is executed delightfully well and will leave you crying with laughter.

This film's real strength, though, is in its stylistic precision. Incredibly Burtonesque, the visuals are powerful enough to secure the film a spot high on the fantasy league tables, everything is so brilliantly other-worldly that there's a spirit to the film that not even Jim Carrey can touch.

In spite of Carrey (yes, in spite of), Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events has the comedic edge on its JK Rowling cousin, and has the weight and smarts to become this Christmas' big movie. It's Carrey's involvement that, very nearly, lets the entire film down, but do your best to look past him and you won't go far wrong. One thing's for sure: you could do much, much worse than Lemony Snicket this Christmas.


Jim Carrey ... Count Olaf
Liam Aiken ... Klaus
Emily Browning ... Violet
Kara Hoffman ... Sunny
Shelby Hoffman ... Sunny
Jude Law ... Lemony Snicket (voice)
Timothy Spall ... Mr. Poe
Catherine O'Hara ... Justice Strauss
Billy Connolly ... Uncle Monty
Meryl Streep ... Aunt Josephine
Luis Guzmán ... Bald Man
Jamie Harris ... Fernald - Hook-Handed Man
Craig Ferguson ... Person of Indeterminate Gender
Jennifer Coolidge ... White Faced Woman
Jane Adams ... White Faced Woman


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