A Series of Unfortunate Events is author Lemony Snicket’s sorrowful account of the Baudelaire orphans’ journey through various foster parents, all while pursued by their evil relative Count Olaf, who wants to steal their parents’ fortune. The first three of the now 11 books were used to create the recently released movie, titled simply with the name of the series.
The movie starred Jim Carrey as the infamous Count Olaf, and I’ll admit I was very concerned about this casting choice before the movie was released. Carrey has been fine in some movies, but really annoying in others, and I feared he would try to make A Series of Unfortunate Events into Dumb and Dumber. This fear was more than encouraged by the movie’s trailer, which showed Carrey screaming random lines and running around, very un-Olaf. However, when I saw the movie, I found that the trailer had entirely misrepresented his performance. He portrayed Olaf fairly closely to how I had envisioned him while reading the books.
As far as the other actors, the three orphans were played by new child actors, and they did a fairly good job with their roles.
The movie itself was well done in terms of setting, with Snicket’s creations coming to life fairly accurately to how they were described in the books. Olaf’s house, the reptile room, Aunt Josephine’s house; all were done very well to create the combination of realism and comedy that characterized Snicket’s books.
The biggest problem with the movie was that the writer tried to tackle too much. In trying to fit all the main plot points of the first three books of the series into one movie, there was a feeling of being rushed around the plot. Though the books were short, they were fairly dense, so there were a lot of plot points in the two hour movie. First they’re delivered to Olaf, then they’re subjected to his evil schemes, then they’re rushed off to the next guardian, and so on. Also, the movie was structured such that the second and third books were enclosed by the plot of the first, and some parts had to be massaged for this to work right, further creating the feeling that the movie was rushed.
Overall, the film was worth seeing, despite some of its drawbacks.
