What can you say about a movie in which Jim Carrey's over acting is the highlight?
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (LSASoUE) is based on a series of wildly popular children's novels in which all manner of bad things happen to the Baudelaire children. What set the books apart was their absolute refusal to muck around in anything resembling sweetness or happy endings. Moments of happiness are really just ways to make the crash that much harder when the next bad thing happens. Sure it doesn't sound like material for kids but if you stop and think about it, just how light hearted are the Harry Potter books or Grimm's fairy tales? The real draw for Hollywood is of course an established fan base. The main concern is not art but making money. That's important to keep in mind when you see just how light this movie is. There is never a sense of dread, never a feeling of fear, never some idea that any of this is real. Without that, the story just doesn't work. It just lays there like a wife who told her husband yes just so he would stop pestering her for sex.
Some might call it tacky to discuss sex in a review of movie aimed at kids. Luckily I am not such a person. But I also didn't cast Emily Browning in the movie. Just who is that aiming at? Her appearance seems much too old for her character. It's the very definition of the term "jail bait." Sporting huge eyes and lips Angelina Jolie would be jealous of, her very appearance seems out of sorts with the rest of the movie, particularly in a sequence where Carrey's Count Olaf tries to marry her for her inheritence. It's more than a little creepy and not in a good way. None of this is Ms. Browning's fault of course. She gives a fine performance and can't help the way she looks. It just makes me wonder about the motivations of the folks in charge of this movie. It's the most uncomfortable use of a young actress since Kirsten Dunst in Interview with the Vampire.
The story revolves around the Baudelaire children, Violet (Browning), Klaus (Liam Aiken) and Sunny (Kara and Shelby Hoffman), who are suddenly orphaned by a fire at their home that kills both of their very wealthy parents. They are shuffled off to live with their closest relative, Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) who treats them like slaves and plots their early demise so that he can get control of their sizable inheritence. The plot fails and Olaf is exposed, causing the kids to be sent off to the next closest relative. Olaf appears in disguise and tries once again to get his hands on them. The movie continues on like this to the end. As I said earlier, it doesn't really work because the threat to the children never feels real.
Part of the problem is the production design, which paradoxically I loved. The look of the film is just slightly off kilter from reality and none of it seems to belong together. Cars look like they come from decades ago but contain modern touches. The sky is always an odd color and the horizon feels too close. Clothes definitely belong in a time other than our own while houses don't seem to belong to any time. It is impossible to define a time and location for the story. The whole thing adds up to a movie with a dream-like feel. Since it feels like a dream, it also doesn't feel real and thus can't sustain its unlikely and unresolved plot.
I mentioned Carrey's overacting, something I complain regularly about but for once, it was my favorite part of the movie. Carrey plays an actor and a bad one at that. Like Annette Benning's character in Being Julia, he never stops posing or playing to his audience. Unlike Julia, he's an over baked ham who never knows what constitutes too much. Carrey brings his trademark oversized personality and rubber face to this and unleashes. But unlike his overacting in the past, this feels calculated, as if he is deliberately shooting well past normality because that is where Olaf resides. He is the movie's biggest star but unfortunately not the main character, which left me tapping my fingers impatiently when he wasn't on screen. I would put it up against what I would call his best previous performances in Dumb & Dumber (yes, I'm serious) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (shame on you if you haven't watched it yet).
Billy Connolly has a nice turn as Uncle Monty, a reptile loving scientist of some sort who disappears far too quickly from the movie. Meryl Streep gives what I can only call a disappointing performance. Never before have I wanted her to get off the screen so could be spared more of what she's doing. It was the first time I felt she had no handle on a character and so just decided to wing it. Maybe the character was written badly or maybe she was given bad direction but whatever the explanation, she really needs to not do it again. The kids were fine but not particularly noteworthy beyond the way Browning was shot like a glamour model.
Watching the movie you can almost feel the internal debate over how dark to make it. The material calls out to be much darker but time and time again the camera shies away, afraid to make anyone uncomfortable. There is a scene with deadly eels that seems more silly than scary. A take more like a similar predator in The Princess Bride would have been much more effective. We're supposed to care for these kids for the way they keep working their way out of bad situations. But the situations aren't that bad and so the kids don't feel all that special. Plus gags like subtitles for the baby Baudelaire take even further from the supposed darkness. Jude Law gives a lively narration that hints at a book far darker than the movie. It's like someone telling you about an awful beast hiding in your closet, which turns out to be a kitten.
I have a certain affection for the movie, even though I can't recommend it. It looks great and Carrey is greatly entertaining. You can sense that the material is better than the treatment it's getting. It makes me hope for a sequel so that they can learn from their mistakes and get the tone right. In the meantime, this remains a noble failure.
- John Shea
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