LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS by Brad Silberling
by Andre Soares
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) 
Director: Brad Silberling. Screenplay: Robert Gordon, from Daniel Handler’s books The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window. Cast: Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, Liam Aiken, Emily Browning
LORD OF THE SNICKERS: A SERIES OF INTERMINABLE EVENTS
Three of Daniel Handler’s Gothic tales about three siblings on the run from a ruthless and greedy relative are given the Hollywood treatment in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Not surprisingly, the US$100,000,000+ film boasts first-rate production values, with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s lenses perfectly capturing (and enhancing) the eerie Gothic-ness of production designer Rick Heinrichs’s preternatural creations.
And as befits most Hollywood fare, the script (credited to Robert Gordon) offers a mechanical take on Handler’s stories, getting many of the unfortunate events right while obliterating whatever magic and wit there were in the original work. (Handler’s screenplay adaptation of his stories was reportedly discarded once director Brad Silberling came onboard.)
Compounding matters, snickery Jim Carrey, hardly the subtlest of actors, plays the villainous Count Olaf as if Lemony Snicket’s were his own private one-man show. The story suffers as a result, but that surely is of little concern to the filmmakers. When you are producing a film with a nine-figure budget, what matters are a big box-office name and groovy special effects that will fill in seats at movie houses.
Thus, the beautifully-packaged but heartless, soulless Lemony Snicket’s plods along for nearly two hours, as each unfortunate — and interminable — event is followed by another.
Synopsis:
A house fire kills the wealthy parents of the three Baudelaire children: the bookworm Klaus (Liam Aiken), the inventive Violet (Emily Brown), and the toddler Sunny (Kara Hoffman and Shelby Hoffman). A stupid judge grants guardianship rights to Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), a distant relative who sports a combination of bad hair, bad teeth, and bad manners. The kids sense that the Count is no good, but a family friend, Mr. Poe (Timothy Spall), is too stupid to realize the obvious and leaves the children with the evil Count.
At first, Count Olaf treats the children like slaves. He then realizes that they would be better off dead — at least as far as he is concerned. With the kids out of the way, Olaf would inherit the dead parents’ money. After a failed attempt at the kids’ life, Olaf loses custody of the children. Even so, he will not let the trio just run away with their fortune. Thus, the Count comes up with different disguises in an attempt to bump off the three obnoxious children who are keeping him from becoming rich. The kids recognize him right away, but imbecile adults like the snake specialist Uncle Monty (Billy Connolly) and the realtor-phobic Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep) don’t. The price of not listening to children can be deadly.
Notes:
Distributors Paramount and DreamWorks had the the choice of releasing two versions of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: a scarier one, closer to the tone of Daniel Handler’s stories, and a lighter version tasting like Hollywood syrup. Test screenings revealed that little kids and their moms preferred their events less unfortunate and more saccharine.
"Daniel’s very prolific. He cranked out draft after draft, and he got to that point where up is down and red is blue, and I could see that in the screenplay. It was kind of a wreck, a glorious one." Director Brad Silberling, explaining why author Daniel Handler was fired from the Lemony Snicket’s film project. As quoted in the Los Angeles Times.
VOCES INOCENTES / INNOCENT VOICES
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