Movie Review: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events came out in 2004 and was directed by Brad Siberling. The film stars Jim Carrey, Liam Aiken, Emily Browning, Kate and Shelby Hoffman, Billy Connolly, and Meryl Streep. This Friday, Netflix is debuting their series and I thought it would be fun to travel back thirteen years ago and review this one. The plot follows three children who after the destruction of their home and the death of their parents in a mysterious fire, are sent to live with Count Olaf. Olaf is a vile man who seeks one thing only: to steal the fortune from these kids that their parents had left behind. When I was younger, the Lemony Snickets books (All 13 of them) were a staple of my childhood. Those books were great and I loved every one of them. I bet one can picture my surprise when I discovered there was a full feature movie of the series starring Jim Carrey. Positives first. The acting in this film is all really great. There's not one bad performance and there isn't a single performance where someone breaks their character. These feel like actual people and that's definitely a pro. Another great thing is how emotional and deep this movie gets. Not only do we feel for our protagonist leads, but this is a movie that explores the depths of human nature. It can be very dark, but at the same time light hearted. The movie at hand is one of the only I've seen to ever successfully blend black comedy and pure lightheartedness. It's a great combination and it really helps set up this universe. This is a childhood favorite of mine and so it's hard to pick out flaws, but there are a few. One negative that I realized is that Carrey while great, does have a tendency to overact a bit. This is a great character and he brings all the right traits to it, but sometimes he does go a bit too far. Granted, he's a great villian character and he's nothing but pure evil. Yet sometimes that line between acting and bringing a little too much was crossed. Now this movie is older, but the CGI in a few of the scenes is atrociously bad. There's one scene where an entire person is composed of CG up close and it's not functional. However,  this is up for debate because while there are some CGI fails and flops on screen, there's also a lot of really amazing even gorgeous imagery that really brings the story to life. Finally, I hit the biggest problem most fans of the books have with this movie. As I stated, there are thirteen books in the series of novels. This movie doesn't really adapt a lot of the series, and what it does, it comes out rather oddly. You see, the film starts out with the first book, goes to the second novel, and then moves over to the third. The ending is the end of the first book, plus an ending that we never even get in the books. The movie ends the series before the book series ended. It's complicated and really hard to explain, but if Harry had killed Voldemort in the first film, what would be the point of even making the movie? A Series of Unfortunate Events was indeed a planned new franchise, but how could there have ever been one if the film ties up all the loose ends? Actually that's not true, the movie gets into VFD (the secret organization), but only a mere touch. We're never given any real information on what it is, and you'd have to read the books more to learn about it. Overall, A Series of Unfortunate Events is a good movie, but has a bizzare narrative structure and storytelling, with great acting, and is a personal old favorite of mine. If you've never seen this or read the books, give them a try..they are truly wonderful and lively storytelling. Three stars