Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is a 2004 film, directed by Brad Silberling. It is based on the first three books in Lemony Snicket's popular series of children's novels: The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window. It was nominated for four Academy Awards.

As in the books, exactly where and when the story takes place is unclear. The movie has been praised for its creative sets and costumes, all of which have a dark, gothic feel, leading to a highly unusual and creative visual motif.

Plot

The film follows the adventures of three newly orphaned children (played by Emily Browning, Liam Aiken, and Kara & Shelby Hoffman) who try to escape from the deranged Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) in a series of different adventures. Co-stars include Jude Law as Lemony Snicket, Timothy Spall as Mr. Poe, Billy Connolly as Uncle Monty, Meryl Streep as Aunt Josephine, Dustin Hoffman as a film critic, and Cedric the Entertainer as the Constable.

The film is narrated by Lemony Snicket (played here by Jude Law), who occasionally appears in silhouette, writing the story on a typewriter in what appears to be the interior of a clock tower.

Inventive Violet Baudelaire, her intelligent younger brother Klaus and their sharp-toothed baby sister Sunny are orphaned when a mysterious fire destroys their parents' mansion.

They are placed in the care of bank manager Mr. Poe, who entrusts them to their "closest relative." However, misinterpreting the phrase, Mr. Poe chooses the relative who lives the shortest distance away, the obnoxious Count Olaf. Olaf promises to take care of the orphans "as if they were actually wanted" but in fact, he is only interested in the huge fortune that Violet will inherit when she turns 18. In the meantime, he treats them like slaves.

Eventually, after a failed attempt by Olaf to murder them for the money by locking them in his car parked on railroad tracks, Mr. Poe sends the children to live with their uncle, Dr. Montgomery Montgomery, a cheerfully eccentric herpetologist (with a well-stocked reptile room) who is planning a trip to Peru. Unfortunately their stay with Monty is cut short when Olaf turns up in disguise, pretending to be a man named Stephano, a replacement for Monty's assistant Gustav. (It is later determined that Gustav was murdered by Olaf so he could take his place.) The Baudelaires see through the disguise instantly, but Monty was convinced he was a rival herpetologist trying to spy. The Baudelaires were too late to prevent Olaf from murdering him. They manage to convince a skeptical Mr. Poe and a constable about Olaf's guilt and he flees.

The Baudelaires are forced to move on again, this time to the shores of Lake Lachrymose, where their Aunt, Josephine Anwhistle, resides. She seems to have an irrational fear of almost everything, and yet lives in a house precariously perched over the edge of a cliff held up by stilts, with a wide window overlooking the lake. The house appears to contain clues to the cause of the fire that killed their parents. Before the children can discover more, however, Olaf turns up again, disguised as a sailor, and courts Josephine.

The orphans soon discover that Josephine has disappeared and the window has been smashed, leading the Baudelaires to believe that she has committed suicide. She leaves what looks like a suicide note, but which is actually a coded message telling them that she is hiding in Curdled Cave on the shore of the lake. Before they can follow, the house is torn apart by a hurricane. The Baudelaires escape, eventually find Josephine, and attempt to take her to safety. Unfortunately, Count Olaf finds them first, taking the Baudelaires and leaving Josephine at the mercy of the water and of the deadly Lachrymose Leeches.

Back at Olaf's home, he concocts another scheme that involves staging a play starring himself and Violet. In the play, his character will marry Violet's character, but in such a way that the marriage will actually be legal, giving him access to her money. To ensure Violet's cooperation he holds Sunny hostage. While the play is being performed, Klaus attempts to rescue Sunny. In doing so, he also discovers a device (a gigantic eye-shaped magnifying glass attached by six rods protruding from a round window that looks similar to a drawing found in Aunt Josephine's house) which seems to have been the cause of the original fire.

Olaf's plan is thwarted at the last minute when Klaus uses the magnifying glass to burn the marriage certificate. At the end, the narrator jokingly tells us that Count Olaf is sentenced to suffer everything the Baudelaires experienced and then spend his life behind bars. However, the narrator immediately adds that he only wishes Olaf was caught. In "reality", Olaf and his theater troupe escaped from the authorities. At the end of the film, the Baudelaires find a letter sent to them from their parents, informing them of how much they were loved and that there is in fact, more good in the world than bad. The envelope also contained a spyglass similar to the one Dr. Montgomery was carrying and one that was found in the ruins of their home. The film ends with the Baudelaires heading to their new guardians in Mr. Poe's car (who are probably Sir and Charles from "The Miserable Mill"), and the narrator saying that the Baudelaire's were "very fortunate, indeed."

Cast

Comparison with the source material

Like the original books, the movie contains various clues to the mystery of the Baudelaire parents' deaths. For instance, the children discover that all of their relatives seemed to own spyglasses, and acquire one themselves at the end. Count Olaf has an eye-shaped tattoo on his ankle, and Aunt Josephine's wide window is also eye-shaped. The mysterious initials "V.F.D." can also be spotted at least one point. At one point at the beginning of the film, if one were to look closely when Klaus finds the spyglass, next to it is a wooden box with the initials "V.F.D." written in fancy letters. Due to the exposed green tubes at the open end of the box, and dialogue from The Slippery Slope, it can be figured out that this box contains Verdant Flammable Devices.

There are quite a few differences between the books and the film. Many of these involve some dark content being toned down, although some are related to time restrictions, which usually happen to most book-movie conversions. An example of this is the ending of The Wide Window. In the film, Olaf leaves Aunt Josephine alone to fend for herself on a sinking boat. The book's ending, however, is far more sinister: Olaf pushes Josephine into the water, and the torn remnants of her lifejacket are later discovered although this version can be seen on a deleted scene. An example of time restriction is when the Baudelaires and Aunt Josephine are trapped in the sinking boat. In the book, Violet builds a refraction device to signal for help. In the movie however, she and Klaus call for help and wave their arms.

The film makers also added to (and, in some opinions, convoluted) the "V.F.D." mystery by adding a spyglass that the members possess. Lemony Snicket has not incorporated such a device into his plot (although the Vision Furthering Devices in "The Penultimate Peril" could be a clue on where the film focuses on the spyglasses. These spyglasses in the book are used by Esme Squalor, who calls them "sunoculars", Jerome Squalor, and Justice Strauss).

A small part was added to the movie in the scene in which Olaf tries to kill the Baudelaires by stopping his car on the rail track, locking them inside, and waiting for the train to come. Luckily, the orphans escape by using one of Violet's inventions to flip the railroad switch just as Mr. Poe arrives.

Another change from the source material is that Count Olaf is shown to be responsible for starting the fire at the Baudelaire mansion, using a giant, eye-shaped magnifying glass. The books imply that Olaf had a hand in causing the fire (he is a known arsonist), but this has never been explicitly stated. Olaf's statement in the final book in the series, The End ("Is that what you think?" ..... "you don't know anything.") suggests that he denies starting the fire.

The eye tattoo that Count Olaf sports on his ankle is considerably different from the one described in the book and drawn by Lemony Snicket in his fictional autobiography. The tattoo in the books is formed out of the letters V, F, and D, but it is impossible to form these letters from the tattoo in the movie.

Reception

It was released on December 17 2004 in theaters. The film was a moderate hit at the box office during the 2004 holiday season, eventually earning over $100 million in North America.

However, the movie garnered a mostly positive reaction from critics, earning a 71% score at the popular critic review site, rottentomatoes.com[1]. Most negative criticism concerned Jim Carrey's portrayal of Count Olaf, claiming that he made the villain more interesting than the heroes. Another criticism concerned the inclusion of the AFLAC Duck in a scene of the movie (when the Baudelaires were at Lachrymose), which came across as a shameless marketing ploy.

However, much praise was put on the child actors, especially Australian actress Emily Browning; Jim Carrey said, "...Emily is just going to break a million hearts". Billy Connolly and Meryl Streep also received praise for their portrayals of Dr. Montgomery Montgomery and Aunt Josephine, respectively. The movie was also critically acclaimed for its artwork, for which it was nominated for an Academy Award.

Another criticism is the alleged "toning down" of the film. Apparently, the original film was much darker and more faithful to the source material but was edited to make it more appealing for younger children. Some examples of scenes from the book removed from the film include Olaf threatening to chop off one of Sunny's toes with a large knife from The Reptile Room and Olaf pushing Aunt Josephine off a boat into the leech-infested lake in The Wide Window. In the film, Count Olaf threatens Violet and Klaus with the knife in order to force them to let him enter the house, and as he is pushing Aunt Josephine into the lake, Lemony Snicket interrupts, saying "Well, you get the picture." (There was footage shot of Aunt Josephine sinking in the lake, with digital leeches to be added in later, but it was cut both for time purposes and its slightly gruesome quality).

Some fans of the books were disappointed by the portrayal of Count Olaf as silly and childish. The timeline of the story was also rearranged, putting the wedding at the end of the film, whereas it is in the very first book.

The film won an Academy Award for Makeup and was nominated for the awards for Original Music Score, Costume Design, and Art Direction.

Home video release

The DVD (widescreen and fullscreen versions) and VHS video were released on 26 April 2005. There is also a two-disc widescreen DVD Special Edition. The standard DVD package contains a single disc with commentary track by the books' author Daniel Handler, in character as Lemony Snicket, along with director Brad Silberling. Throughout the commentary, Lemony Snicket criticizes the film, ostensibly for being too dismal and depressing. He claims that he was kidnapped, chained up in a small room and forced to watch the film. He points out discrepancies between the books and the film and accuses Silberling of not having read the books. During the scene in which the Lachrymose Leeches appear, Handler also sings and plays a song on the accordion ("Leeches...Leeches...should not be in a film..."). Circuit City included a second disc with further behind-the-scenes footage and original trailers within "specially marked packages," but this "Circuit City Bonus Disc" only contains a fraction of the further bonus material that is found within the widescreen Special Edition package.

The Lemony Snicket DVD sold by Target also comes with The Blank Book, a small diary. The DVD edition sold at Wal-Mart included a copy of The Bad Beginning.

Sequel

There are constant rumors of a sequel, but none have been officially announced. Emily Browning is contracted to appear in a possible sequel, should the project come to fruition. However, it is unclear whether Jim Carrey would return for such a project; he usually refuses to appear in sequels.

Trivia

• The title "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" is not in the main title sequence. Instead, it is a computer-animated cartoon (made to look like stop motion) titled The Littlest Elf, and after about thirty seconds, the scene abruptly stops. Snicket interrupts this, saying "I'm sorry to say that this is not the movie you will be watching. The movie you are about to see is extremely unpleasant." He then begins setting up the story (repeatedly urging the audience that they have the opportunity to leave the theater, living room, or airplane where the film is being shown). In the book series, a book named The Littlest Elf is mentioned several times.
• The end credits give no credit to end-title-director Jamie Caliri or his crew.
• The movie employed several sites for viral marketing: CountOlaf.com, WhiteFaceWomen.com, and HookHandMan.com. The latter two have since been taken down.
• In the scene in the Baudelaire's gutted mansion, where Klaus picks up a spyglass, the letters V.F.D. can be seen on a box within the desk. These letters form an important plot point within the novels. The box appears to contain Verdant Flammable Devices, mentioned in the 10th book, The Slippery Slope. The spyglass itself is a Vision Furthering Device from the 12th book, The Penultimate Peril.
• When the incredibly deadly viper escapes it's cage, you can see the handle turning on the outside. However it couldn't have escaped that way, because in a previous shot, there is no handle on the inside.
• When Aunt Josephine shows the Baudelaires her photo album, she accidentally shows the children a picture of her friends, including the Baudelaire parents. Pausing on the frame in which the picture is fully shown will reveal that a much younger Count Olaf is standing at the back of the picture, obviously part of the group.
• Count Olaf's car is a 1960 Imperial Crown Limousine, with an extended vinyl roof cap.
• Mr. Poe's car is a Czech made Tatra T603.
• In 2005, Viacom, the parent company of US distributor Paramount Pictures, purchased international distributor DreamWorks. Paramount then sold the DreamWorks live-action library, but kept distribution rights to the films, and therefore, Paramount now controls the worldwide rights to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.
• Tim Burton was originally engaged to direct this film, with Johnny Depp playing Count Olaf. When Burton left the project, Depp left as well. Also connected with the project while Burton was there were Helena Bonham Carter, who was cast as Judge Strauss, and Glenn Close, who was cast as Aunt Josephine (Close did not leave the project when Burton left, but was fired by Brad Silberling, who felt that Meryl Streep better suited the role). [2]
• The shop 'The Last Chance General store appears in the eighth book 'The Hostile Hospital'.
• The shopkeeper in The Last Chance General store is reading The Daily Punctillio. The headline reads "Orphans to Blame?" The sensationalistic and incorrect news reportings of The Daily Punctillio are relevant to both Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography and The Carnivorous Carnival.
• In the "Last Chance" general store, Count Olaf is seen reading the Drama Logue magazine. On the back cover of the magazine is an advertisement for a "Veritable French Diner", a place mentioned in Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography. On the front, it shows Lon Chaney from The Phantom of the Opera.
• There are three references to The Littlest Elf. There is a model of the elf in Count Olaf's car. While on the way to Lake Lachrymose, the theme music from the beginning can be heard. When in the boat, Count Olaf mocks the children for suggesting that they'll have a happy ending, saying "everyone will be singing and dancing and giggling, like The Littlest Elf."
• Daniel Handler has a small part in the movie, as the man taking pictures of a dead Uncle Monty.
• The "Aflac Duck" makes a short appearance during the orphans regress from Aunt Josephine's house. The duck is perched on a boat, and jumps off when debris falls from above.
• The background of the play has trees that have their branches shaped like eyes with pupils in the center.

Wikipedia information about Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.