Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events *** (2004, Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, Billy Connolly, Timothy Spall, voice of Jude Law) – Classic Movie Review 8706

With its marvellously gorgeous production and beautiful gleaming, retro-style photography, director Brad Silberling’s 2004 Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is a dream-looking children’s film, based on three of the books by Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler), The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room and The Wide Window.

It won an Oscar for Best Achievement in Makeup (Valli O’Reilly and Bill Corso), with three other nominations.

A well-cast Jim Carrey is obviously having a ball as an out-of-work actor, Count Olaf, a far-off relative assuming disguises to terrorise three kids, Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire (Emily Browning, Liam Aiken, Kara Hoffman/ Shelby Hoffman) out of their inheritance after their parents die in a fire.

A sparingly used Carrey is a lot of fun, though Carrey isn’t scary, which he should be, helping to keep the movie on this side of the dark side. The two older children (with lots to do) are terribly wholesome, conventional and bland, and the other adults (Meryl Streep as Aunt Josephine, Billy Connolly as Uncle Monty, and Timothy Spall as Mr Poe) overact amusingly to their hearts’ content.

Though a nice film, yet not a super one, Snicket is worth the price of a ticket.

The ubiquitous Jude Law provides the voice of the author Lemony Snicket, and can be glimpsed at his typewriter in the shadows periodically on screen.

Infuriatingly, favourite character actors Luis Guzmân, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Adams, Craig Ferguson, Catherine O’Hara, Cedric the Entertainer and an unbilled Dustin Hoffman are brought in and totally wasted. Why? Presumably because they had a big budget and could afford to. The budget was so big at $140,000,000 that it threatened to endanger its profitability, though it took $118,627,117 in the US and its Cumulative Worldwide Gross was $209,073,645.

Also in the cast are Deborah Theaker, Jamie Harris, Bob Clendenin, Lenny Clarke, Jane Lynch, Helena Bonham Carter and Fred Gallo.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8706

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