Super Sunday: Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events (2004)

Damn you, Carrey, and your really long
arms.

Super Sundays
Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Written 7/10/12

I would be lying if I said that the film wasn't at least partially responsible for getting me into the Series of Unfortunate Events books penned by Daniel Handler under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket. Back in the early days of this blog, around two or so years ago now, I reviewed all of the books in a very loose style that showed in a way why I loved the series and why I felt it was so important to my development as a person. Handler's books taught me that the world was one where humour could be found in the darkest of circumstances, one in which there were no good or evil people but simply people with agendas, ideas, philosophies, allegiances and bitter rivalries. It was a world of ambiguity and of sadness and pain but fought for intelligence and the power to look past the follies of the world and just get on with it. Spoilers for the book series follow.
     In 2002, Nickelodeon won the right to make a film version of the first three books in the series, The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window. Wisely, the filmmakers chose to shorten the two later books to adventures within the first, allowing it to have a more rounded quality. The film's biggest problem does come with the conflicting style and tone that results from the book series' episodic nature, and I would have perhaps preferred if they had stuck to the complex if brief first book. The film also manages to rather admirably contain a lot of references to the V.F.D plot from the books which, if you've not read them and don't mind being spoilered, was a secret organisation that split into two opposing factions one of whom was devoted to fighting fires and another to starting them. I didn't like where it was going at the beginning of the film, but by the end I think they left enough of that plot ambiguous for either future sequels or for the viewer to get into the book series.
     The story's villain, Count Olaf, is played by a very interestingly cast Jim Carrey. Now of course, he's in my favourite film ever and all that, but the truth is that I'm not a big fan of the vast majority of Carrey's work. I hate his rubberface persona, the way that directors always give him free reign to go crazy. Some of Carrey's improvs are very funny, especially in his Stefano persona half-way through the film, but they do sorta ruin the tone. Olaf is supposed to be charming and sophisticated and yet at the same time a very desperate, weasley man who is murderously obsessed with acquiring the Baudelaire fortune and annihilating the remaining members of the fire-fighting side of the V.F.D. His death in the final book shows his love for Kit Snicket and the deep complexity behind his apparent cruelty - the Baudelaires' parents made him an orphan and he provoked the Schism in the organisation in revenge. Carrey and his mad-cap ad libs may do well to create a persona of his own, but don't fit within the story as a whole. In the books, much comedy (and tragedy) was made of the fact that the adults around Olaf could never see through his ridiculous disguises. Frankly, if anyone doesn't see that Carrey's character is a nutjob, they need their head examining.

The Baudelaires. Emily Browning is the only one of the three
to ever really work again, and even then they've been
semi-edgy indie flicks with mixed agendas.

     The problem that I have with the film isn't just Carrey overacting with every little chance that he gets, but also due to the film's tone, which while commendably matching that of the book, with its overly pessimistic outlook as tempered by a strange narrator, has one small difference. The film ends with the message that hey ho, good will triumph over evil in the end and if you keep your chin up everything'll turn out alright. It seems like a very lazy way to end the film, especially after the repeated themology from the book that this is not a story with a happy ending. By the end of the books, these characters end up as murderers themselves, and they end by sailing off to an ambiguous future which may either be being swallowed up by an enormous black question mark or living a life of secrecy. This is not a story with a happy ending and it ruins the bloody point if you're gonna try and give it one just because it's for kids and you think they're soft!
     But despite that, I don't hate the film. I don't. I think the main child stars, especially Emily Browning (who would later star in her unfortunate tries-to-be-a-parody-but-fails-due-to-both-problems-with-execution-and-people-just-missing-the-point magnum opus Sucker Punch), do their job admirably and play the main leads as best as they could have been played; they give the characters a more appropriate voice than Handler ever managed, his protagonists always sounding a smidgen too adult for my liking. The film's style and tone matches of the books and on its own, the film is an interesting if misguised adaptation of one of my favourite series of books. It's not perfect, but I'm fine with it.

Thanks.