Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (Movie 2004): Carrey Mugfest

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events movie with Jim Carrey: As the ruthless Count Olaf, Carrey – inspired by silent era star Lon Chaney – disguises himself as two other characters in Brad Silberling’s lush but tedious fantasy adventure.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (movie 2004) review: Gothic tale is perverted into a Jim Carrey showcase

Three of Daniel Handler’s Gothic stories about three siblings on the run from a greedy, ruthless relative – The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window – are given the big-budget Hollywood treatment in director Brad Silberling and screenwriter Robert Gordon’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.

As to be expected, the $140 million movie boasts first-rate production values, with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s lenses thoroughly capturing the eerie Gothic-ness of production designer Rick Heinrichs’ creations and the extravagance of Colleen Atwood’s costumes. (It’s surely no coincidence that all three also worked on Tim Burton’s Gothic-y fantasy Sleepy Hollow, which earned Heinrichs an Oscar and Lubezki a nomination.)

On the downside, as befits most Hollywood fare – e.g., Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – Silberling and Gordon (and the film’s producers) have taken a mechanical approach to the narrative, thus obliterating whatever enchantment there may have been in the original work. (Handler’s own adaptation was discarded once Silberling – replacing Barry Sonnenfeld – came onboard.^[1])

Man of a handful of faces

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events begins after a house fire kills the wealthy Baudelaire couple (production designer Rick Heinrichs, Amy Brenneman), parents of Klaus (Liam Aiken), Violet (Emily Browning), and the toddler Sunny (Kara Hoffman and Shelby Hoffman; no relation to Dustin Hoffman, who has a cameo in the movie).

After a judge stupidly grants guardianship rights to the creepy Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) – a distant relative sporting a combination of bad hair, bad teeth, and bad manners – a family friend, Mr. Poe (Timothy Spall), leaves the children in his care.

Can’t adults ever see the obvious?

At first, Count Olaf treats the kids like slaves, but he eventually realizes that they would be better off dead. After all, with the three brats out of the way, the Baudelaires’ money would be all his.

Following a failed attempt on the children’s lives, the count loses his custody rights. But no matter. In true Lon Chaney fashion (see The Phantom of the Opera, The Unholy Three, etc.), Count Olaf comes up with a couple of disguises that, he hopes, will help him to get rid of his financial obstacles once and for all.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events movie with Meryl Streep: A Series of Unfortunate Events’ cast also includes Jude Law as Lemony Snicket, and cameos by Dustin Hoffman, Catherine O’Hara, Helena Bonham Carter, and Jane Lynch.

Jim Carrey mugfest

Jim Carrey, hardly the subtlest of actors, plays Count Olaf as if Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events were his one-man show. The story suffers as a result – wasting someone of Meryl Streep’s caliber is just one more misstep – but that seems to have been of little concern to the filmmakers.

Perhaps when you are making a film with a nine-figure budget, the focus is on big box office names, visual grandeur, and state-of-the-art special effects. Little else matters.

Thus, the beautifully packaged but brainless, soulless A Series of Unfortunate Events plods along for nearly two hours, as each unfortunate – and interminable – event is followed by another.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (movie 2004) cast & crew

Director: Brad Silberling.

Screenplay: Robert Gordon.
From Daniel Handler’s books The Bad Beginning (1999), The Reptile Room (1999), and The Wide Window (2000).

Cast: Jim Carrey. Meryl Streep. Liam Aiken. Emily Browning. Jude Law. Timothy Spall. Catherine O’Hara. Billy Connolly. Craig Ferguson. Luis Guzmán. Kara Hoffman. Shelby Hoffman. Jennifer Coolidge.
Cameos: Dustin Hoffman. Helena Bonham Carter. Jane Lynch.

“Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (Movie 2004)” notes

Glorious wreck

^[1] Regarding Daniel Handler’s dismissal from the making of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, director Brad Silberling told the Los Angeles Times: “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.”

In the same piece, Handler lamented that it “made me sad to put a lot of effort into a film that turned out to go in a different direction.”

Meryl Streep and Jim Carrey Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events movie images: DreamWorks | Paramount Pictures.

“Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (Movie 2004): Carrey Mugfest” last updated in April 2023.