The Unseen Movie Review

Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events

Jim Carrey did a lot to revive interest in his output with the recent Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. There, his sensitive, slightly more grown-up than usual role allowed him to regain some of the fans he had lost through an apparent insistence on only taking parts in which his rubbery, gurning face and silly voices could be used to full effect.

At first glance, Lemony Snicket seems to be a return to unimaginative Carrey-casting. The basic summary (a Christmas movie where he plays, under fairly heavy make-up, a character with a distinct lack of Christmas spirit) seems to be a near-repeat of his turn in 2000’s The Grinch who Stole Christmas. The fact that The Grinch was based on a cult children’s book by Theodore Geisel (writing under the pseudonym Dr Seuss) and Lemony Snicket is based on a cult children’s book by Daniel Handler (under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket) simply adds to the impression that Carrey hasn’t thought too hard about this one. You could hardly be blamed for imagining this will be more of the same.

Thankfully, for those unfamiliar with the books on which the film is based, as many in the UK are, the feel is closest in tone to a good Roald Dahl adaptation. Carrey manages to remain funny at the same time as being an evil and selfish old man, exploiting his dead relatives’ orphaned children while happily spending their inheritance. He is wonderfully sinister, and just the right side of the over-the-top pantomime villain performance that his malevolent role as the sinister Count Olaf could easily have slipped into.

Add to this a supporting cast of names that would normally get top billing – from the fatherly Billy Connolly through a paranoid Meryl Streep and even Jude Law (who seems to be in everything at the moment) – and you have all the makings of a Christmas kids’ film to knock the competition for six. Thanks to a combination of expert eyes for the unusual in director Brad Siberling and the superb double-act of Production Designer Rick Heinrichs and Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki - who last worked on Tim Burton’s spookily weird Sleepy Hollow, winning Heinrichs an Oscar and Lubezki a nomination in the process - the film also looks as great as its casting.

It’s quite refreshing, after so many failed attempts to turn popular children’s’ books into big-budget screen adaptations, that for a change some effort has gone into the production, rather than relying on the name alone to bring the kiddies to the cinema. The third in the Harry Potter series showed how it can – and should – be done: imaginative, visually interesting and deeply textured films can still be made even if they are for the kids. They don’t have to be bright, colourful and jolly – they can be dark and moody, and deal with genuinely unpleasant and scary subjects, and yet the kids will still love them and find the funny bits just as gigglesome, if not more so.

Like a ghost train filled with laughing gas, Lemony Snicket looks to be the biggest children’s film of the festive season, and rightly so. It is a superb antidote to the usual jolly pap, but still highly entertaining and in places hilarious – top stuff.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 12:00 AM