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Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events
Movie
Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events
Director
Brad Silberling
Cast
Meryl Streep, Jim Carrey, Timothy Spall, Emily Browning, Liam Akin



Rating: **

We would be tempted to view this intriguing adaptation of Lemony Snicket's children's fables for the interesting get-ups of the stars.

Dark brooding and sometimes susceptible to be labeled abusive to children A Series Of Unfortunate Events chronicles the rather bizarre and often painfully sadistic adventures of three bright orphans who are tossed from one eccentric household to another in search of a home away from home.

Perhaps the best comment on what director Bard Siberling hopes to achieve through this acutely dark journey into the under-age psyche comes from the boy Klaus (Liam Akin) who mumbles angrily about the meanness of their situation. His sister Violet (Emily Browning) wonders if Klaus means the wicked uncle who has taken them in.

"No. I mean our parents for leaving us like this," replies the boy. Despite their demonically dire straits the three children remain remarkably hopeful, almost upbeat, to the end, as though they knew they were puppets in the hands of creators who know how to get kids out of the clutches of the crises that invades those who have no guardian angels to guard them.

In the way that director Siberling (certainly in full form here after doing a rather disappointing screen version of the comicbook spook-hero `Casper`) handles the various episodes, we see the kids being tossed through a tumult of fairytale dangers, not quite life-threatening but still menacing enough to make us bite our nails in suspense.

All the three children are delightful performers. And the infant Sunny whose gibberish is translated for us as French, is a scream-stealer.

The film's visual profile is impeccable. The frames are unreal in an authentic way. The characters seem to be at once fantasy figures and reality prototypes. The Gothic colours merge with seamless splendour into a more contemporary framework.

Parts of the children's cruel adventures are also very funny. The violence perpetrated against them is partly comic and partly sinister. Departing from both the fable-like scenario and the horror genre the director creates a world that's done up in elaborate shades suggesting swash-buckling intrigue.

The performances, specially Jim Carrey with his amusing and alarming masquerade of villainy, seems to echo the mood of reckless adventure. Billy Connolly as an animal-loving benevolent guardian and Meryl Streep as a squeamish aunt get into the thick of things without appearing hammy—a tendency that looms large over a film which redefines the spirit of magic and adventure with a lipsmacking disgregard for both children's and adult's cinema.