Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
review by Peter T. Chattaway | posted 12/17/2004
 1 of 4
Having charmed the critics with his remarkably subtle performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Jim Carrey is back to his over-the-top ways in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events—and on one level, this dark, twisted, amusing children's movie may be a better showcase for his unique talents. The film, based on a series of best-selling children's novels, is supposed to be about three orphans who live with a series of guardians, most of them dreadful; but the show belongs, for better or worse, to the hammy, greedy, villainous Count Olaf (Carrey). As the orphans' first guardian, he tries to steal the fortune that is being held in trust for them, and when the orphans are taken away from him, he shows up in disguise, adopting a new persona for each new guardian he must plot against.
Jim Carrey is over the top, in a good way, as Count Olaf
This premise allows Carrey to play not only Count Olaf himself, but each of the personalities adopted by Count Olaf, who fancies himself the leader of an acting troupe made up of freakish folk who seem to have run away from the circus. At one point, Count Olaf pretends to be a nerdy expert on snakes named Stephano, and at another, he adopts the guise of a pipe-smoking, peg-legged, Newfie-accented seafarer named Captain Sham. Carrey seems to have had a blast making this film, but more importantly, he inhabits the part so perfectly that it is difficult to imagine anyone else in the role; while he does indulge in a few glaringly obvious Carrey-isms, such as screeching like a velociraptor during one of his "performances" or tossing off a quote from The Karate Kid (the books make no such pop-culture references), he also brings the character to life in a way that nails his unique mix of menace, vanity, and absurdity.
The film itself starts on a similarly strong note, and strikes just the right introductory tone, while giving the story's narration a more cinematic spin. The author of the books—in the real world, Daniel Handler, but in the stories, Lemony Snicket, a mysterious figure who may know at least some of the characters personally—always begins by telling the reader to put the book down and go read something more cheerful instead. The film's narrator (Jude Law) does just the same, telling us early on, "This is an excellent opportunity to walk out of the theatre, living room or airplane where this film is being shown." Lines like that perfectly capture the bleak silliness of the books, yet skillfully adapt it to a new form.
Violet (Emily Browning) and Klaus (Liam Aiken) look to minimize their unfortunate events
The story itself concerns the Baudelaires, three children whose parents die when the family mansion burns down. Violet (Emily Browning) is a mechanical genius who ties her hair up in a ribbon whenever she invents something; her brother Klaus (Liam Aiken) is a preteen bookworm with a photographic memory; and their baby sister Sunny (played by twins Kara and Shelby Hoffman) is especially good at biting things—her gurglings, incidentally, are indecipherable to all but her siblings, so the subtitles translate them for us.
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