“Lemony Snicket’s"

Had I not seen the previews a dozen times before actually viewing the final product, I may have liked “Lemony Snicket’s ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events.” more than I did. Unfortunately, the film’s best features were already old news. The six-month hard sell that Hollywood seems to think will translate into box office gold has once again reaped only disappointment.

Jim Carrey stars in the adaptation of the popular children’s series concerning the Baudelaire orphans many trials and tribulations at the hands of Count Olaf, a distant relative with more than a few tricks up his sleeve.

Carrey plays Olaf with his usual overt acting capabilities.

Unfortunately, he is left to do it in a wasteland of art direction that stands in place of a simplistic plot and a drab supporting cast.

The children do little else than look perturbed. They are good children, smart children.

Even the youngest, Sunny, has the goods on every adult she encounters. We are given the translation of her baby-speak in subtitles, like a harlequin’s asides.

They are funny for the first few times, but eventually we begin to expect them. It is one of the motifs of the book series that is amusing to read, but it is given too much weight here and collapses under the pressure.

Perhaps it’s just that the other two children are so one-dimensional that Sunny has to do more than her share to make up for them. Violet, the oldest is a braniac who saves the day time and again by deducing solutions to problems such as how to escape from a house that is falling off of a cliff.

I guess we are supposed to cheer for her inventiveness, but she is too much of a little adult to warm up to.

Her brother, Klaus, is a little more emotional which isn’t saying much. He has read more books than God, books that neither you nor I could ever find the time or patience to leaf through.

Having retained every fact he has set his bespeckled eyes on, he is extremely handy at filling in Violet’s gaps in logic. Between the two of them, they have the perfect kiddy think tank going.

If I sound perturbed by these brats, I suppose I am. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed reading “The Bad Beginning,” the first Snicket installment, seeing these characters fleshed out without so much as a drop of childlike charm in them left me cold.

It’s the same problem I have with the Harry Potter movies. Just the sight of that glassy-eyed goofball makes me want to get on my broom and spell out “Surrender Hollywood” in the sky. If only I had an army of Winkies!

In contrast, consider the child actors from, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Yes, it’s an altogether different kind of film from another era, but they were likable and watchable because there was a genuine quality to their portrayals. They could really act. You cared about them.

In “Lemony Snicket,” I was rooting for Count Olaf from the beginning.

That’s really the only reason to see this flick. Carrey has some good bits, many of them too short for my taste, but then again, I’m a huge fan of his comedy.

He has a great ability to use the idiosyncrasies of body language and facial expression along with vocal inflections to make lines like “All I ask is that you do every little thing that pops into my head while I enjoy the enormous fortune that your parents left behind” say volumes.

Children will probably like this movie even if they aren’t Mensa material. It’s set in an imaginary world where adults are either: conniving villains, phobic eccentrics or complete idiots. Meryl Streep, of all people, has a small role in this thing, but I wouldn’t give her best supporting actress for it.

Even Dustin Hoffman turns up near the end to play a theatre critic. I think he has two lines, both of which are bad.

Billy Connolly plays the only likable adult in the movie, Uncle Monty. Connolly plays him as the perfect patriarch; ever patient, infinitely protective, wise, wonderful and generous.

When he gets bitten by one of his pet snakes, it’s a relief.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if the children are bad; it’s because of the parents. And if the movie is bad, it’s because of the director. I would have demanded more acting from the kids and a heftier script. This movie is truly a bad beginning to what is sure to spawn a sequel or two. Unfortunately, we will have to just wait and see how much worse it can get.