Not Too Unfortunate of an Adaptation

The end of 2004 marked the first holiday movie season after Lord of the Rings, which meant that there couldn’t possibly be a film that would create the same level of anticipation in me. Still, there were several movies in which I had at least a moderate interest, and so far I’ve managed to see most of them. A glaring exception is Finding Neverland, which never even made it to a theater in Erie. For shame.

A couple weeks ago, my dad noticed that A Series of Unfortunate Events had hit the dollar theater, and he offered to take me to see it that weekend. We went, though Dad didn’t have a very clear idea of what he was in for. He certainly didn’t expect the first unfortunate event, a glitch that resulted in his seeing a trailer for Pooh’s Heffalump Movie upside-down and backwards. I was getting popcorn at the time and was spared the opportunity to search for Satanic messages in the trailer that was so benign the right way around.

But to the film. I applaud the creativity of the opening and closing. The animated bits that persist through the end of the credits reward those few who actually bother to stick around until the screen switches back to its intermediary line-up of trivia and Coke ads. Meanwhile, the beginning sequence, presenting in an obnoxiously bright and cheerful manner the adventures of a happy little elf, calls to mind the fake cover so graciously provided to readers of Lemony Snicket’s Unauthorized Autobiography.

These are potentially the most self-referential stories I’ve ever read, and the film goes to just as much trouble as the books to warn us of impending danger and offer a more palatable alternative. Jude Law, hunched over an antiquated typewriter, provides the doleful, sympathetic voice of Lemony Snicket himself. That narratorial presence is my favorite part of the books, and Law inhabits the role naturally, his vocal timbre a perfect match for Snicket’s warnings and foreshadowing.

The other most impressive on-screen presence is, of course, Jim Carrey. As the film was
promoted, Count Olaf was about the only part of the movie anyone seemed to care about. Carrey camps it up as much as he can, making Olaf a little less sinister and a little more ludicrous. I saw Carrey promoting the movie on Letterman, and he explained that his take on Olaf was a wannabe actor who is very bad at what he does. All of his characterizations are over-the-top and easy to see through; though he reappears in several different guises, the unfortunate Baudelaire orphans recognize him immediately each time (though their incompetent legal representative, Mr. Poe (Timothy Spall) can never see it until it is too late). As in the Austin Powers films, the villain is the most comical character. Of his later incarnations, I find Stefano, the man who comes to assist the reptile-loving Uncle Monty (Billy Connolly), quite irritating, but I love his role as the crusty old sea captain who woos paranoid Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep). This is fortunate for me, since I adore Uncle Monty but find Aunt Josephine extremely grating.

The orphans, particularly Violet (Emily Browning) and Klaus (Liam Aiken), spend most of the film looking quite somber. Infant Sunny (Kara and Shelby Hoffman) seems to take a brighter view of things, adopting a disposition to match her name. Violet and Klaus are fine, but Sunny gets on my nerves, mainly because of her sarcastic comments (which appear in subtitles as she can only make a series of babyish sounds). The younger members of the audience found this very amusing, but I thought the remarks were stupid and very out of keeping with the style of the book. Snicket does frequently provide possible translations for Sunny’s gurgling, but these speculative bits of dialogue are droll and worth a chuckle. In the film, they’re just going for cheap laughs, and it degrades the integrity of Snicket’s idiosyncratic linguistic usage.

As I mentioned before, Uncle Monty, the affectionate, eccentric snake collector, is a character I hold in high regard. When I read the book, I fell in love with him after some trepidation, initially fearing that he might be as untrustworthy as Count Olaf. He soon became my favorite character in the series up to that point, so I was pleased to see him make the transition to film so well. I did not pick up on his being Scottish in the book, so that was a nice surprise as well. The lilting melody he sings to the orphans with the aid of one of his favorite snakes was one of the film’s high points for me.

Several high-profile actors put in an appearance in the film, most oddly Dustin Hoffman in a very brief role as a theater critic and Gilbert Gottfried uttering just one squawk as a very familiar-looking duck. It’s not so much the actors, though, as the set design that captures the attention. The film is gorgeously grotesque, and every set piece (with the exception of those used in the opening sequence) has a bit of a gothic feel to it.

The film combines the first three books and takes considerable liberties with the material. We still wind up with the ending from the first book, though it is considerably altered to make for a more acceptably dramatic movie climax. While the conclusion is rather dreary and certainly open-ended enough to allow for a sequel, Law’s narration prevents it from seeming like a true unhappy ending. In fact, the film’s last words are “In that sense, they were very fortunate indeed.” Well, I guess a little thread of warm and fuzzy running through all that darkness can’t hurt.

The movie is not as good as the books, but it’s a pretty good adaptation, especially in visual terms. Fans of the books should check it out. And if they can get past the inherent oddity of the movie, as my dad eventually did, the unindoctrinated may just be inspired to pick up one of Mr. Snicket’s books themselves.