"In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle."
Why am I always attracted to depressing books and bad movie adaptations? The last two posts I did were of really bad adaptations and a lot of my other reviews are of Stephen King (whose books are very depressing in general). This book adaption is not particularly "bad" as it still does try to at least stay faithful to the book. It's also not THAT bad of a movie. It's enjoyable enough if you've never read the books, and the movie did get me to start reading the books, so it's not all that bad even for book readers (well it's not Percy Jackson near bad). Anyways, A Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of gothic children's books published from 1999 to 2006, written by Daniel Handler, who goes by the penname Lemony Snicket (fun fact, in the book's universe, Snicket and Handler are two separate people and are active characters). The series revolves around Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, who have become orphans after their parents died in a fire. They are placed under the cares of numerous guardians, all the while trying to avoid Count Olaf, who wants their fortune. The Baudelaire orphans also in the process attempt to solve a mystery revolving around a secret organization called V.F.D. and their morals get very murky by the end of the book. The film was released in 2004 (before the final few books were released mind you) and was directed by Brad Silberling and is an adaptation of the first three books, The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window. The film actually won the Academic Award for Best Makeup, beating out The Passion of the Christ, presumably for the admittedly good makeup on Count Olaf. A series of sequels were originally planned, but was eventually cancelled for some reason (as it did generally well).
In a much more successful effort, a Netflix series came out in 2017 with Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf (another weird but better casting choice), and I found that one to be more accurate, and actually much more fun to watch as a book reader. Perhaps I'll review the series on here someday as well.
This time, like the last two reviews, I won't be doing my usual structure for adaptation reviews, but I will just be talking about the book first, and then the movie, pointing out stuff they changed or added. At the end, I will still do my bit of talking about both of them, and the summative thoughts.
The Novel
I think I like the books because of how dark they are and how Snicket doesn't really skirt around dark topics with his child readers. He often talks about murder, kidnapping, loss, dealing with grief, and most of all, morality. Snicket is very upfront about the dark side of life and actually highlights it through his books. I also really liked that he likes to highlight the "greyness" of morality through his characters by making everyone be very morally dubious. Even the supposedly innocent Baudelaire children commit crimes and even the supposedly villainous Count Olaf does noble things.
Snicket also emphasizes the "two sides to every story" idea a lot. There is a persistent theme of characters refusing to hear/acknowledge the full story because they're afraid of acknowledging the real truth. For example, the Baudelaires are given hints that their parents killed Count Olaf's parents, but they refuse to properly confront it, because they're hanging onto this belief that their parents could do no wrong. There are also a lot of instances where characters are told just one side of the story with the other side kept a secret by the adults. And Snicket uses this frustration of not knowing the whole story very well throughout the books similarly to the frustration of children never being believed by adults, another prevalent theme in the books.
What I also found really interesting is that the most unlikable character throughout the entire books is the most "neutral" character. Arthur Poe is neither good or evil. He's just a family friend who manages the Baudelaire Orphans' affairs as the executor of their will. He never actively tries to harm them, and when push comes to shove, he at least tries to what's right. But despite all that, most readers end up hating him more than Count Olaf or any of the other villains in the story because of how "real" Poe is. As much as evil Olaf & co. are, most of them are charming in their love of villainy that you at least end up caring about what happens to them because you want to see these characters stick around. But with Mr. Poe, no matter how well-meaning he might be, he always sticks to the role of the stupid adult who can't ever see through Olaf's disguises (and remember that Olaf disguised himself as a woman at one point) and just becomes so insufferable that you kind of want him to die first since he's caused more trouble for the Baudelaires at one point or another. Even though he's not cruel or greedy, he's somehow a worse person than the actually criminal lunatics. Poe is obviously meant to represent how children are often frustrated that adults never take them seriously about anything, and Snicket really represented it well.
The book also really encourages reading and being well-read often helps the Baudelaires out of tricky situations, and is also an indicator of being a "noble person" in the books. Snicket makes a lot of literary allusions throughout the books. For example, the Baudelaires are named after the French poet Charles Baudelaire, Uncle Monty (who studies snakes) is probably a reference to the comedy troupe Monty Python, and there is a Nevermore Tree in a town full of crows, which is a clear reference to Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, where the raven says "Nevermore" a lot. It's actually really interesting doing research into all the literary and historical allusions that Snicket used in the books.
Overall, it's just a great book series. Maybe it's because I like dark, not-positive stuff, but I honestly found the series a great read. It's "realistic" in a very dark and cynical way. If you haven't read the books yet, even as an adult, I think you would enjoy it (unless you don't like depressing books).
The Film
Apart from Jim Carrey, the rest of the cast performed reasonably well. Jude Law was fine as Snicket, and the actors they got for the Baudelaires were reasonably good, and Timothy Spall did a good job as the insufferable Mr. Poe. I can't help but feel that they misused Catherine O'Hara completely as Justice Strauss. Justice Strauss is a very important character in the first book who is meant to be the only positive figure in the children's' lives, and she was supposed to represent the frustration that the Baudelaires could have been saved from Olaf by Strauss right away but wasn't. But the movie had O'Hara appearance once at the start and disappear until the finale, where she does nothing but cry and run off the stage like a useless plot device. If they have Catherine O'Hara for her whole, is there a reason why they couldn't have had her actually do something?
The best actors in the movie were Billy Connelly as Uncle Monty and Meryl Streep as Aunt Josephine. Billy Connelly was the best choice for the jovial Uncle Monty, and even though Aasif Mandvi was good in the Netflix adaptation, he pales in comparison to Billy Connelly. Connelly really just brings a lot of joy and good cheer in the little screen time he has, and he makes a great Uncle Monty. With Aunt Josephine, again, Alfre Woodard was good in the Netflix version, but when you're up against Meryl Streep, it's hard to be better. Streep just takes the constantly scared Aunt Josephine and brings her to life on the big screen perfectly. I honestly can't think of a better casting choice then Connelly and Streep.
They really messed around with the story chronology. They took the ending of the first book and made it the ending of the whole movie (which means it comes after the events of The Wide Window). It was a weird choice and I wasn't a big fan of it. To make a reason for why the Baudelaires were taken out of Olaf's care in the first place, they had Olaf try to kill the orphans by parking his car on a train track; the Baudelaires survive this, and contact Mr. Poe, who actually recognizes the danger of the situation for once and removes them from Olaf's care. After offing Monty and Josephine, Olaf miraculously manages to get the orphans back and THEN does the whole marrying Violet thing (which is immensely creepy since Olaf keeps talking about wanting to spend their wedding night together - YIKES) and gets arrested. I get why they did this because obviously just ending the movie at the third book with no confirmed sequel would be stupid, and I can understand why they did this, and apart from that, the plot is actually super accurate, even though it's all pretty rushed.
So... those spyglasses and the big glass eye. They weren't a thing in the books. Not sure why the writers thought spyglasses had to be a V.F.D. thing (but it carried into the Netflix version) since the tattoos were enough of an indicator that one was a volunteer. The spyglasses don't even serve a significant purpose apart from the orphans figuring out that their guardians were related to V.F.D., which never happens in the books until much later.
Also, the eye. Count Olaf's tattoo (oh yeah, Olaf has a tattoo of an eye on his left ankle) design actually changes. Originally, before V.F.D. was a thing, Olaf's eye tattoo looked like a regular eye:
But after Snicket came up with V.F.D., he changed the design quite drastically so that the eye is elaborately made up of the letters V.F.D.:
The books actually have both versions of the eye throughout the books, and decides to ignore the continuity error, and even in the later books, they use both designs of the eye to represent Olaf. The movie, despite having the secret organization plot, decides to go with the regular eye design and it's a BAD drawing of an eye at that:
See, this makes no sense to me; if you're going to make V.F.D. a central plot point, why make the eye design different? Granted, they never mention V.F.D. by name, but you would think the writers would at the very least do the better job of designing the eye.
On top of that, they claim that Count Olaf burnt down the Baudelaire Mansion using a big glass eye that works as a magnifying glass. The book certainly puts forth the POSSIBILITY that Olaf burnt down the mansion, but it was never 100% confirmed. Olaf even says the Baudelaires "don't know anything", implying that Olaf might not have done it. We as leader are LED to believe that conclusion only because the Baudelaires believe it (after all, he's been hounding after their fortunes since day one). But the whole point of the fire was the moral ambiguity of it all; just as Count Olaf could do noble things, the Baudelaire parents could also have done wicked things (in fact it's heavily implies they killed Olaf's parents) and so it's left to ambiguity who even burnt down the mansion. The book leaves many things open-ended and ambiguous and I'm not a fan of the fact
I really wasn't a fan of the ending. IT'S TOO POSITIVE. I understand that they were trying to end on a bit of a happy note with the orphans realizing that they were fortunate to have each other, but the books portray that well-enough without making it all happy. The first few lines of the first book is literally "In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle." It's called a series of UNFORTUNATE events for a reason; it's not meant to have much positive moments and the letter at the end with the orphans feeling fortunate for having each other feels like a copout. Even at the end of the VERY LAST BOOK, it still doesn't have a very positive ending; it's all ambiguous. The ending just irks me with how out of tone it is with the rest of the movie.
Personal Opinions
The Novel:
The books are great. They're dark, but can be really funny with some of the dark comedy. And they aren't afraid to get grey when it comes to morality; no one is ever truly good or evil (save for a few characters), and even the orphans end up becoming horrible people who commit crimes. I also love the fact that the orphans always just rely on their own knowledge, inventiveness, and in Sunny's case her extremely sharp teeth to get out of dangerous situations. Each character is so resourceful in their own ways, and it's always a lot of fun to read about intelligent child protagonists. I would highly recommend the books and no matter how old you are, I think you will LOVE them.
The Film:
Overall, it's not the WORST film. It was good enough that it got me interested in the books, so it's not all bad. But the movie really suffers from Jim Carrey's weird casting as Count Olaf. Don't get me wrong, I think Jim Carrey's a great actor, but I just think he was a horrible choice for Count Olaf; it's hard to see a character as a villain when that villain is basically being over-the-top Jim Carrey. Apart from that, the plot is surprisingly well kept to, but they got the tone all wrong. The ending is too "positive" and the serious scenes are just undercut by how goofy Olaf acts. The movie could've been a great adaptation if they had casted anyone BUT Carrey, but his style as Olaf just ruins the movie.
Overall Assessment
It was just so disappointing. The accuracy of the plot in general at the very least shows that the writers understood the material and tried to adapt it faithfully while putting their own spin on it. But I think that the writers took too MUCH liberty with the book. Apart from the general plot and character designs, it doesn't feel like a Snicket book at all. There are too much comedic moments happening whenever Olaf's on screen to give it the "doom and gloom" feel of the books at all. I honestly think the movie overall was fine, and even though I love Jim Carrey, I honestly think he ruined the movie. By having him as Olaf, the writing team probably had to write a bunch of goofy jokes in and they apparently let Carrey improvise a lot of his scenes, which 100% ruined it. It's really hard for me to say that Carrey ruined the movie, but he really did. It's still a fun movie; it's just not great compared to the book and that's why I don' watch it.
For my next review, I think I'm going to do a big review of an epic fantasy series written by Stephen King, The Dark Tower Series. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!
