Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (Brad Silberling, 2004) O-kayyy. So far, for Hallowe'en on this site we've featured apocalyptic religious cults, invisible men, sadistic versions of "Big Brother" and lots and lots of creepy things. I'd like to say the best is yet to come, but, no. Things are going to get worse. Much, much worse...to the point, where I have a true sense of dread about what's coming up—not just in the posting, but in the very writing of it. Dear, dear me. Oh, it's going to be awful...simply awful. Really, people should have better things to do than to make movies like the ones I'll be considering in the next couple of weeks. But (sigh) it is Hallowe'en Season. And one must simply get this stuff out of our systems, so that we can vote with clear consciences, and think of our fellow citizens and how they are coping with a pandemic, and social distancing, and wearing masks, and interviews from the census by bright ardent people who are only doing the right thing, as well as the intricacies of working at home while also supervising the on-line education of our precious dutiful children.
But in the warm comfort of the domicile, many flights of stairs from the garret in which this is written, the Hallowe'en movie of choice is this (to be heretofore crunched to Unfortunate Events to avoid a cramp). It might be the best movie Barry Sonnenfeld never made. It has his insensibility, his florid camera moves,* snappy editing, austere framing and live-action cartoonish gambits (lots of shots of peoples' faces gaping into the camera).
But, it didn't have enough budget and so Brad Silberling took over the project.
Silberling is a chameleonic director; he tends to take on the characteristics of whatever project falls into his lap—handy for his long tenure as a television director of such idiosyncratic shows as "NYPD Blue," but making him hard to pin down as a feature director. How do you explain the disparity between Unfortunate Events and his unfortunate City of Angels? Before you attempt that, let me trump it by adding the even more unfortunate Will Ferrell vehicle, Land of the Lost.
So, it's perhaps fortunate for Silberling that so much of "Unfortunate Events" depends on others. The Lemony Snicket-styled writing—a bit like "Miss Manners" without her morning pick-me-up—of dark, despairing fore-shadowing** inspires a switch-back Rankin-Bass-styled opening that comes crashing to a halt. ("This would be an excellent time to walk out of the theater, living room, or airplane where this film is being shown." says the Lemony Narrator, as read by Jude Law)
"Fade to Black" is the more appropriate phrase. Fade to monochromatic gothic steam-punk macabre, (which permeates the film, like a lighter version of "The Addams Family") as the film takes up the sad misfortunes of the Beaudelaire orphans: Violet, a voracious inventor (Emily Browning); Klaus, a voracious reader (Liam Aiken); and Sunny, a voracious biter (Kara Hoffman and Shelby Hoffman). When their parents are killed in a mysterious fire, the Estate (executed by a piggish Timothy Spall), the kids are shipped off to the cunning clutches of Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), a despicable actor who only cares for the Beaudelaire fortune. Treated as servants by the fiend, he decides to kill them off when it's determined that he'll only get the money when they're adults. And so he leaves them, locked in a car on a rail-road track with the 11:15 barreling down on them.
What to do, what to do?
Based on the first three "Unfortunate Events" books ("The Bad Beginning," "The Reptile Room," and "The Wide Window,"***), the film is as episodic as could be with the child-endangering machinations of the Count the single unsavory thread running through it.
Upon Carrey's every entrance, Silberling takes the wise course of just hanging back, giving Carrey a wide shot (with distorting anamorphic lens) and keeping any other actor out of giggling range. So much of his performance is ad-libbed, you could make the case that it's Carrey who's driving the bus; things calm down considerably when Billy Connolly and Meryl Streep take possession of the children (and the movie), but gears up again when Carrey dervishes his way into the scene (Connolly stays out of his way, but Streep engages him, going eye-to-eye).
It's a good thing, too. "Unfortunate Events" could have turned excessively mordant to the point of leeching all the fun out of it, production-designed into stasis if Carrey wasn't there to break windows (and characters) in the proceedings. In that spirit, the cast is rounded out by such anarchic spirits as Catherine O'Hara, Jennifer Coolidge, Cedric the Entertainer, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Lynch, and Craig Ferguson that flit around the corners to keep things from getting too predictable, and deservedly more than a little off-kilter.
But, it didn't have enough budget and so Brad Silberling took over the project.
Silberling is a chameleonic director; he tends to take on the characteristics of whatever project falls into his lap—handy for his long tenure as a television director of such idiosyncratic shows as "NYPD Blue," but making him hard to pin down as a feature director. How do you explain the disparity between Unfortunate Events and his unfortunate City of Angels? Before you attempt that, let me trump it by adding the even more unfortunate Will Ferrell vehicle, Land of the Lost.
Based on the first three "Unfortunate Events" books ("The Bad Beginning," "The Reptile Room," and "The Wide Window,"***), the film is as episodic as could be with the child-endangering machinations of the Count the single unsavory thread running through it.
** It's fun when doled out in tea-spoons of dread and low dudgeon, but if you want to hear it overdone, listen to the director and author Daniel Handler's commentary track on the DVD. Handler (as "Lemony Snicket") acts like your staid Aunt Petunia, who goes all-fluttery and horrified at the movie, which is funny for ten minutes, then overstays its welcome...by two hours.
*** Dear reader, do be careful when going to these links, for it appears this Lemony Snicket character wants your e-mail address. The cad. I would be cautious. Very, very cautious.
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