Lemony Snicket Movie review

[alobear]

I'm running a project about foster care at work, so I decided to name it Project Olaf, much to the amusement of some of my colleagues, one of whom insisted on lending me the film of A Series of Unfortunate Events when she discovered I had never seen it.



I read the first of the Lemony Snicket books some months ago and didn't like it very much because it combined over-the-top characters with a lack of depth that made me unsympathetic to the protagonists.

I wasn't surprised to discover that the film was overflowing with the kind of caricatures and pantomine characters that really put me off, but the fact that the two older children played it completely straight made them stand out as the only reasonable people in the whole film and thus won them my interest and support. They were both excellent, keeping me watching until the end with a sense of suspense. I really enjoyed the cleverness of their ideas and plans, and their obvious despair at their circumstances added a depth of emotion I hadn't found in the book.

Having Jude Law narrating didn't hurt, either...

Comments

[corone.livejournal.com]

No suprise that my least favourite bit was Jude Law :-)
Glad you seemed to get from the film what I was getting from the books though.
Shame it didn't do so well as there is more plot that picks up in the later books.

[alobear.livejournal.com]

I was particularly impressed that the director made sure the kids were at the centre of the film, rather than letting Jim Carrey take over.

[corone.livejournal.com]

Absolutely.
Did you look at the deleted scenes?
There is a costume test that made a very good trailer in the extras on the DVD.