reVIEW (10)
LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

As a companion piece to tonight’s On The Lot review, I thought I’d wheel out this oldie but goodie, which was originally published under the title, “The Wonderful(ly Dark) World of Snicket.”

Little Red Riding Hood is eaten by the wolf. Sleeping Beauty is impregnated as she sleeps and wakes to discover she is the mother of twins.
These are just some of the fairy tales (or marchen, as they were called in German) in their original forms, before the Age of Enlightenment dealt them a crippling blow, and Disney all but obliterated them. They’re still there though, these dark, rather adult tales, there for the curious and the enthralled.
Which brings us, in a roundabout fashion, to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is not unlike a dark, traditional fairy tale, though without the magic. What it lacks in spells and cantrips though, Series makes up for in mystery and deaths.
Oh, yes, there are deaths here, children. In fact, the film’s plot is triggered by death.

In one fell swoop, at the hands of a mysterious fire, the Baudelaire children (Violet, Klaus, and Sunny) suddenly find they are the Baudelaire orphans, left in the care of frustrated actor—and villain of the piece—Count Olaf (Jim Carrey). What follows is, as the title may suggest, a series of close calls, near-mishaps, and fatalities (both apparent and actual).
Clearly, this is not a Disney family movie, and early on, we are invited by Jude Law—who does a tremendous voice-over job as Lemony Snicket, relating the sad and woeful tale of the Baudelaire children to us—to leave the theatre, if we are expecting light, fluffy cuteness. He actually does this twice, and if by the second time, those of the audience who have no appreciation for the dark and the macabre are still in their seats, then they’ve effectively forfeited any right to complain.
Now, having firmly established its darkling nature, it’s time to examine the film itself.

To begin with, the star of Series is clearly its production design. It has that otherworldly feel peppered with Gothic chic that is Tim Burton’s greatest gift to mainstream cinema. Small wonder, as Series production designer Rick Heinrichs collaborated with Burton on the pretty-to-look-at-but-not-much-else Sleepy Hollow. The world of the Baudelaires is Dickens on absinthe: grand and gloomy, shadowy and cobwebbed, like a skewed cartoon where the figurative animals neither sing nor dance, but stare at you furtively from the nooks and crannies.
Don’t think this is another Sleepy Hollow though. You can actually look at other things aside from the sets. As I’ve already mentioned, Law is excellent here, as is Meryl Streep, as the overwrought and overly neurotic Aunt Josephine. As far back as She-Devil and Postcards from the Edge, Streep proved that she wasn’t just adept at accents and drama; she had a killer sense of the comedic as well, which serves her well in Series, so much so that you wish she had far more screen time than she actually does.
And Emily Browning and Liam Aiken, who play Violet and Klaus Baudelaire, respectively, though not giving breakthrough performances on the level of a Haley Joel Osment, are certainly a sight better than the three Harry Potter principals were in the first film of that franchise. (The comparison arises from the fact that Series is based on the Lemony Snicket children’s novels, The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window, enjoying the current wave of popularity kid lit is experiencing in this post-Harry Potter world of ours.)

Given that Count Olaf is a central character to the tale, it’s sad then that the weak link, performance-wise, is Jim Carrey. Let me make it clear though, that I am not the biggest Jim Carrey fan; I find there is a certain tolerance level I have where he’s concerned, which, once crossed, subsequently makes me inured to his antics. In Series, I reached that level rather quickly, so much so that I found I was happiest when Count Olaf was off-screen. The script, with its occasional modern colloquialisms in its dialogue, isn’t much help either. (Of course, it’s tricky telling where the script ends and Carrey’s ad-libbing begins.)

It’s curious that Brad Silberling ended up directing Series, which is so far afield from his previous film, Moonlight Mile, where Jake Gyllenhaal, Susan Sarandon, and Dustin Hoffman play the fiancée and parents of a recently-deceased woman, coping with their grief and sense of loss. Not only is the scope of Series so much larger than Moonlight Mile (or anything else he’s done for that matter), but the tenor of the piece is vastly different as well.
I bring this up not because Silberling botches the job, but rather because there’s nothing specific and peculiar to the direction of Series that makes it stand apart. For all I know, it could have been Barry Sonnenfeld—who directed The Addamms Family and its sequel, as well as the Men in Black films—at the helm. Perhaps if Series had been allowed to linger a little more on its characters, we might have seen some of the insightful character bits evident in Moonlight Mile. But, preoccupied as the script of Series is with how Violet, the family inventor, gets to McGyver her way out of the latest precarious predicament the dastardly Count has put her and her siblings in, there’s precious little time for those pesky things called “emotions” and “character development.”

Uneven as it is though, A Series of Unfortunate Events is an agreeable piece of macabre entertainment. It’s also a good introduction to the darkly wonderful world of Lemony Snicket. And the cameo by Dustin Hoffman (reunited with his Moonlight Mile director Silberling, and his Kramer vs. Kramer co-star, Streep, though they don’t actually share a scene together) is a nice touch, to boot.
Perhaps if we’d just seen more of the children, and more of Jim Carrey being Count Olaf (as opposed to Count Olaf being Jim Carrey), then we would have discovered characters equally as strange and interesting and darkly delightful as the world they live in.

(Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)

THE NUMBER 23 (Review)

I’m not exactly sure what went wrong.
I mean, I have fond memories of The Lost Boys and St. Elmo’s Fire, and Flatliners wasn’t entirely without merit. (Of course, I haven’t seen these films in quite some time, so they may look like entirely different movies now, under a more adult, more discerning eye.)
I think it all began to go wrong around Dying Young.
Then there was Batman Forever. And Batman & Robin. And 8MM.
Phone Booth was passably watchable, but not enough to wash away the horrid aftertaste of his previous fiascos.
But then there was the awful stumble that was The Phantom of the Opera, a film which seemed far too interested in showing off its sets than in the performances of its actors, and whose musical numbers seemed a pale imitation of those in its theatre incarnation.

I am, of course, referring to Joel Schumacher, and despite all the horrible misses he’s racked up in my books, I’m still occasionally curious to see whether he can again direct a film that is actually something I’d want to watch more than once.
Well, The Number 23 isn’t it.

Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) is an unassuming dog catcher who becomes obsessed with the number 23 through a second hand book given to him as a birthday gift by his wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen).
The book (The Number 23, written by Topsy Kretts—yes, Topsy Kretts), is the unlikely first-person narrative of someone who asks to be called “Fingerling,” a tattooed, saxophone-playing detective whose childhood seems to mirror Walter’s own. And as Walter’s identification with Fingerling grows, he likewise falls under the spell of the number 23.
As Sparrow’s obsession grows deeper, his wife and son Robin (Logan Lerman) are drawn into the mystery as well, as the family moves towards the ultimate truth behind the book and Walter’s own life.

Now, a lot of the time, I find Carrey’s particular acting tics too distracting, so much so that it seems to be the character playing Jim Carrey and not the other way around.
In The Number 23 though, Carrey is able to keep himself restrained just enough to allow Walter to be Walter.
Sadly, Carrey is failed by the script (by Fernley Phillips), which ultimately falls back on a painfully convenient resolution, and Schumacher’s direction (particularly of the sections of the novel, where we see a tattooed Carrey playing a not-too-convincing gumshoe in Schumacher’s torrid version of noir).
Though the central mystery is functional enough to keep the audience’s attention, and the final reveal does address the question that may crop up in some viewers’ minds (why does an apparently well-adjusted individual like Walter fall under the number 23’s spell so readily?), the film itself doesn’t really come together in a satisfying way.

Granted, it’s better than some of the more recent psychological thrillers out of Hollywood like Hide and Seek and Identity, The Number 23 still ultimately rings hollow, particularly in its resolution. Somehow, the dramatic weight of the decision made seems brushed aside and taken for granted, in favor of an ending that should appease any portions of the audience who demand justice, whatever the cost (including the effective crippling of a story that could have risen so much higher).

The truth behind the mystery also doesn’t really address the exact manner in which the second-hand book falls into Walter’s hands, at least not in any logical way that makes sense, and not without having to bring in fate and destiny and quite possibly the supernatural into the post-film discussion. It’s all a bit much, given the overriding sense that the film itself isn’t of much consequence to begin with.

So, Schumacher doesn’t quite get it. Again.
I’m honestly uncertain what he needs to do to come up with a film that’s worth the film stock it’s shot on (if that’s not too anachronistic a turn of phrase in this day and age of digital film).
I guess he needs to start with the script. Some of his failures—particularly Batman & Robin and 8MM—had terrible scripts.
Then he needs to rethink his visual approach. Oftentimes, he crosses the line into territory that is gaudy and overly florid, and this merely distracts the audience from the story being told onscreen.
If he does this, then just maybe, he’ll come up with a winner. Or at the very least, win me over.

Parting shot: Two of Schumacher’s next reported projects (the horror film Town Creek, and The Crowded Room, based on the true story of a man with 24 personalities) pique my interest, so my dance with Mr. S is not yet at an end…