Lemony
Snicket’s: A Series of Unfortunate Events – 2 Disc Set
Picture: B+
Sound: B- Extras: C Film: D
Fantastic.
Exciting. Enchanting. Fun. Spectacular. Spellbinding. These are
all great words, but none of them come close to describing Lemony Snicket’s: A Series of Unfortunate Events, which could have
assumed a different name such as Lemony Snicket’s: A Series of Bizarre,
Irrelevant, Unrealistic, Disastrous, Unintelligent, and most of all
Uninteresting Events that the real unfortunate part is that you have wasted
time watching. The film is basically
like nothing you have ever seen before, yet at the same time if you’ve seen The Royal Tenenbaums, any Tim Burton
film, and/or read anything Harry Potter
than you can pretty much figure this one out in a hurry. However, the real shame is that this film is
childlike fantasy trapped in an adult world and you don’t really know if its
trying to go for humor or just downright insult…for me it was more insulting
seeing the waste of talent just fade away on screen like dust being hit by
Pledge.
Whew. So what
exactly was so atrocious with this cinematic failure? For starters let me go back to the whole Tim Burton thing. Burton is a filmmaker who loves to make
bizarre fantasies, which work most of the time. His true talent lies when he is making a film that does not
adhere to a particular time or place, but solely rests on the themes of
childlike wonder and imagination, for example Edward Scissorhands, which by the way the score for Edward was used for the trailer for
Lemony Snicket. Brad Silberling, Lemony
Snicket’s director, is no Tim Burton and even makes Burton’s worst moments look
interesting by comparison. The world
created in Lemony Snicket looks very similar to some of the worlds created in a
Burton Film (i.e. Big Fish, Beetlejuice, etc), but they are not
even exciting by any stretch of the imagination. Even Spielberg’s bomb Hook
would be a step up from sitting through this, well almost now I am getting
carried away.
I think that with the proper direction this film could
have had more potential, but that’s what happens when you put a director who
comes from a background laced with TV ranging from Doogie Howser M.D. to NYPD
Blue in charge of a huge multi-million dollar project. He has also done a few films along the way,
such as Casper (1995), the dreadful
remake of Wings of Desire known to
us in America as City of Angels, and
his best film Moonlight Mile (2002),
which was above-average even at best.
How on Earth does this guy get the greenlight to direct the likes of Jim
Carrey, Meryl Streep, Billy Connolly, and Jude Law just to name a few? Probably those talents were fans of the
book, and if you are a die-hard fan of the book then you might have a better
chance of actually tolerating this film, but that’s still being quite
optimistic.
The story follows three children who end up as
orphans. They are ingenious children
who like to invent and be creative, but now they must live with their distant
relative Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) after their parents are killed in a fire. The kicker is that they are from a wealthy
family and will inherit a lot of money once they are adults, but Count Olaf has
plans of his own to get that loot early.
However, the kids will end up in multiple family members hands as they
try to thwart off Olaf’s attempts to get their inheritance. Jude Law plays Lemony Snicket and mostly
voice-overs his material, which he literally could have phoned in his
performance. Lemony Snicket is actually
Daniel Handler’s pen name for his series of books, which served as the source
material for Robert Gordon’s screenplay, which desperately attempts to put what
was on page onto screen.
The most unfortunate event by far is the fact that this
tragedy cost $125 million dollars, and made back nearly that much, but
barely. Not having Scott Rudin stay on
as the main producer was a deadly mistake.
You can quickly tell by the DVD released through Paramount that they are
trying to bank some of that money back.
For starters the DVD has a ton of extras, which is a dead giveaway in
most cases that you have a dud film on your hands. Not saying that all DVD’s with extras fall under this case, but
look at how they market the film as if the extras are the highlight versus the
actual material. Before getting into that I shall cover the technical details.
Image and sound are very pleasing for the most part; for
starters we have the anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 picture looking very
solid and serious. Emmanuel Lubezki’s
camerawork looks very good, but this is certainly not a film that he will put
at the top of his credentials. If
anything the film he is better known for would be the awesome work done on
2001’s Ali, or Meet Joe Black (1998). He
even did the camerawork conveniently with Tim Burton on Sleepy Hollow (1998), so there is no doubt that this films ‘look’
is attributed to the fact that he has worked with Burton before. If you didn’t know better you might even
think that Burton directed this film.
Hopefully he will start picking better films to work on after this and
even 2003’s horrendous The Cat in the
Hat, these two films together are enough to make anyone’s filmography
quickly come to a screeching halt.
Now for the sound design, which is presented in
Paramount’s favorite choice of Dolby Digital 5.1; when will they learn to do
DTS as a standard? At least then we
would have been more involved with the film from a sound standpoint as there
are some good moments of activity and musical sonic dimension, but most of that
is hindered by the lacking Dolby audio track that compresses the sound to a
point of insult.
Oh and here come the ‘goodies’. If you have survived the film and are really ambitious to drudge
through the extras you will find tons of material to waste your time away. This is a 2-disc set, which disc one contains
not one, but two separate audio commentaries from the director and then another
one from the director only this time called ‘The Real Lemony Snicket’, I won’t
bother to comment on that. There are a
few other little tidbits on disc one that serves as ‘making of’ material as
well as some outtakes entitled ‘obnoxious outtakes’ which are actually better
than the film, so if they consider these obnoxious than the film must be
downright brutal degradation of the human condition.
Granted you are not in a coma and can bear moving onto
disc two you will delve into more material that serves again as ‘making of’ or
‘behind the scenes’, which get more into the visual and special effects of the
film. The costumes and sets are
definitely well done and executed, but the core of the film does not allow for
them to really have enough weight to help support the film in any
direction. Even the gadgets in the film
are by infant standards just lame and uninteresting, and Harry Potter fans will certainly be disappointed.
The bottom line on this one is two-fold. If you are a kid about the age of 10 and
have never actually seen a good film before in your life than you will probably
think that this is the best one ever made and will quote it for years until you
realize just how bad it is once you’ve seen better films. If you are anyone except a 10 year old of
that description, do everything in your power to avoid it at any cost and if
you are legally able to drink alcohol that might ease some of the pain of this
torment, otherwise enjoy trying to stay awake through this one. As for the DVD…only if you enjoy giving away
20 bucks.
- Nate Goss
