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.)

STRANGER THAN FICTION (Review)

Having missed Marc Forster’s Monster’s Ball, I’ve since kept my eye on his emerging body of work, liking Finding Neverland well enough, though feeling it was a tad too much the inspiring Oscar biopic, while Stay was one of the most visually arresting films of 2005, but did have a significantly compromised script.
I’ve been waiting for Forster to find just the right screenplay to finally give us that first great film that I feel lies within him.
That screenplay is Zach Helm‘s Stranger Than Fiction.

Harold Crick (played by a marvelously restrained Will Ferrell) is an IRS agent whose life is circumscribed by numbers and routine, who suddenly begins to hear a voice that seems to be narrating his life.
Karen Eiffel (the sublime Emma Thompson) is a depressive writer whose next great book, Death and Taxes, is about a decade late. Her publisher has even sent her an assistant, Penny Escher (Queen Latifah), to help finally get the book in.
Karen’s problem: she can’t quite figure out how to kill her main character, Harold Crick.

Stranger Than Fiction is a funny and surprisingly moving examination of life and how we live it, grounded by excellent performances, not just from Ferrell and Thompson, but also from Dustin Hoffman (as Professor Jules Hilbert, a literature professor who Crick approaches for help) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (as Ana Pascal, a baker whom Crick must audit).
Forster casts this film brilliantly, assembling performers who are skilled in both drama and comedy, who are adept in finding poignant honesty even in the lighter, more comedic moments of the story.
And though Thompson is a casting coup (her voice alone is worth the price of admission), the revelation here is far and away Ferrell. Few comedians have the right stuff to pull off drama, and I’d never have guessed Ferrell capable, but here he is, the Everyman thrust into a situation out of the Twilight Zone, and managing to sell the notion well enough to move and elicit tears.
You may be aware of the possibility that Harold is a fictional character, that he may not even be real, but still, you feel for him and his plight. And of course, the post-modern trick here is, Harold is indeed a fiction. Ferrell is playing a fictional character who may actually be a fictional character. Does he not then become truth?
But all the post-modern bits in Stranger Than Fiction aren’t there for the sake of being there, they’re there in service to the narrative, to (among other things) highlight our own questions regarding our lives: who are we, why are we here, are we living a comedy, or a tragedy?

Through Prof. Hilbert, Helm’s script references literary trappings and conventions, using them as a tool to help us understand our lives, an idea which at first may seem dubious, but makes a whole lot of sense, really.
That is, after all, what the best fiction (whether on the page or on the screen) is there for: to illuminate. To make us go, “Oh, yeah. I see that. I get it.”
His script is also able to find the humanity at the core of the humdrum Harold, and give us a character we can identify with and root for. Forster then gets us in Harold’s corner from the word “Go.”

With that visual flair he displayed so masterfully in Stay, Forster sets up a regular day in Harold’s life with onscreen graphics reminiscent of some sections of David Fincher’s Fight Club. We are there, immersed in Harold’s world, as he counts the number of times he brushes each tooth, or the number of steps he takes to get to the bus stop. He even has what seems to be a sentient watch. (A little bit of apparent whimsy that takes on an ultimate relevance in the final act.)
This isolation and melancholy made bearable by the redundancy of routine resonates because we’ve all been there at one point or another in our lives. Harold is there as a stand-in for each and every one of us who may have thought we were living, but instead were merely coasting, skimming the surface of the potentially rich and singular experience that is our life.
And when Harold first hears the voice apparently narrating his life, it’s funny, yes, but we see the panic there as well, as Harold’s world begins to unravel at its meticulously ordered seams. Like I said, Ferrell sells the Twilight Zone idea.
If Helm’s script finds Harold’s humanity, Ferrell puts it on proud display, reinforcing the idea of the power of fiction, and how that reflects upon our life, how a “mere” story can shape and influence, and hopefully leave us a better person than we were when we started it.

Stranger Than Fiction takes the conceit of films like Life Or Something Like It and Latifah’s own Last Holiday, gives it a postmodern spin, and safely gets it light years away from Movie of the Week territory, proving that we can absorb important life lessons without having to be subjected to cheesy schmaltz out of the Hallmark School of Filmmaking.
It also ultimately reminds us of the grace and beauty of the seemingly insignificant, of the tiny, everyday miracles, and in this day and age which runs on the delusion of “Bigger is better,” that’s always a good thing.