Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events movie review, Lemony Snicket review, Brad Silberling, Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, Emily Browning, Liam Aiken, Kara Hoffman, Shelby Hoffman, Billy Connolly, Jude Law, Cedric the Entertainer, Jennifer Coolidge, Timothy Spall, Craig Ferguson, Jane Adams, Jamie Harris, Catherine O'Hara, Luis Guzman. Review by Rob Blackwelder ©SPLICEDwire
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A scene from 'Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events'
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"LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS"
** stars
98 minutes | Rated: PG
WIDE: Friday, December 17, 2004
Directed by Brad Silberling

Starring Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, Emily Browning, Liam Aiken, Kara Hoffman, Billy Connolly, Jude Law, Cedric the Entertainer, Jennifer Coolidge, Timothy Spall, Craig Ferguson, Jane Adams, Jamie Harris, Catherine O'Hara, Luis Guzman, Shelby Hoffman,



 COUCH CRITIQUE
   SMALL SCREEN SHRINKAGE: 25%
   WIDESCREEN: RECOMMENDED

The staging is noisy enough to leap out of your TV and almost make up for what is lost by not seeing it on the big screen.



 OTHER REVIEWS/COMING SOON
 
  • Brad Silberling
  • Jim Carrey
  • Meryl Streep
  • Emily Browning
  • Liam Aiken
  • Billy Connolly
  • Jude Law
  • Cedric the Entertainer
  • Jennifer Coolidge
  • Timothy Spall
  • Craig Ferguson
  • Jane Adams
  • Catherine O'Hara
  • Luis Guzman


  •  LINKS for this film
    Official site
    at movies.yahoo.com
    at Rotten Tomatoes
    at Internet Movie Database
    Watch the trailer (apple.com)


    Perhaps the title 'Jim Carrey's A Series of Unfortunate Histrionics' was already taken

    By Rob Blackwelder

    Jim Carrey makes a four-course meal of the Tim-Burtonesque surreal scenery in "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events," completely overshadowing the story that is supposed to be about three crafty young orphans stuck in a cycle of lethal luck with a string of eccentric guardians.

    As the inheritance-coveting Count Olaf, who is first to mind them (and virtually enslave them) after their parents die in a mysterious mansion fire, Carrey camps and vamps, huffs and puffs, cackles and clowns, sucking up all the air in the room and doing everything short of screaming "look at me, look at me!" Made up as a storybook villain, with a ski-jump nose, a theatrically receding hairline and a wardrobe that seems to mix Edwardian-inspired hand-me-downs from Elton John and Lenny Kravitz, his plan is to get rich by having the children fall victim to some terrible "accident" -- as when he leaves them locked in a car parked on the tracks at a train crossing in the countryside.

    The fact that these kids -- budding inventor Violet Beaudelaire (talented 15-year-old Emily Browning), her voracious-reader brother Klaus (sweet, sad-eyed Liam Aiken) and their toothing-on-anything baby sister Sunny -- continually outwit Olaf is the source of delight in the popular series of darkly humorous kids' books on which this movie is based. But the optimism and innovation the Beaudelaires use to keep Olaf at bay -- even as they're are handed off to subsequent guardians who keep meeting creatively calamitous ends -- are little more than an underdeveloped story conduit here. The ostensible central characters are underwritten and never given the chance to act, but only react -- and only when Carrey stops to take a breath.

    The stage hog, who seems to ride roughshod over director Brad Silberling ("Moonlight Mile"), is probably in less than half the picture, but even though the scenes without him are resplendent with Gothic stylistic flourish (a fantastically rickety cliffside house propped up on precarious stilts) and sublime supporting performances (Meryl Streep is a momentary reprieve as the Beaudelaire children's irrationally but humorously phobic old-biddy third guardian), these brief episodes are merely an eye in the storm.

    "It's not too late to see a film about a happy little elf," advises Lemony Snicket, the shadowy, doom-minded, mostly unseen narrator (with the voice of Jude Law), in the movie's opening scene. Not a bad idea.






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