“A Series of Unfortunate Events”: Not as good as it could have, should have been

The series of children of books called “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” written by Lemony Snicket, have achieved widespread popularity among children of all ages. The books follow the travails of the Baudelaire orphans as they try to thwart their evil Count Olaf’s plans to steal their fortune. The stories are funny, thanks mainly to Snicket’s terrific word play and dark humor, but they are also very formulaic and become very predictable. This is what eventually turned me off the books and it was also what my main problem with the film was.

You see, the Baudelaire orphans go to the home of a new guardian and Count Olaf dresses up in a disguise that the kids see through but the guardians do not. Olaf gets the guardians out of the way by nefarious means and the kids get away from Olaf by the skin of their teeth and go to another guardian who is not long for the world.

“A Series of Unfortunate Events” isn’t a bad movie. It looks good, has Jim Carrey, who flashes moments of comedic brilliance, and the cutest babies on the planet playing Sunny, but it was missing a bit of magic and it could not escape the tiresome movements of the stories. I found myself waiting for Olaf to crash the party, so to speak, and then, moments later, found myself waiting for the kids to move on to the next guardian. The other problem is that the children’s characters are one-dimensional. Violet is described as an inventor, Klaus is a reader and Sunny is a biter and that’s all they are. They aren’t funny or sarcastic or overly dramatic or anything but what they do. Again, I can’t blame the movie because that’s what they are in the books.

One of the best things about the books is Snicket’s narration and the movie underuses Jude Law as the narrator. He is always there narrating it but it is not nearly as funny as it is in the book. I can’t figure out how they missed this either when all they had to do is copy and paste the funny parts of narration into the script.

I’m railing on this movie and I really don’t mean to. It’s not terrible. I laughed a lot, found the movie pretty to look at and enjoyed myself while watching it but now, looking back, I’m seeing all the places where this movie missed the mark. Commercials for the movie proclaim it the “family movie of the year” and this is just wrong, especially when one remembers “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” “Shrek 2” and “The Incredibles.”

There are supposed to be 13 books in the series and this movie covered three of the books. Please do not let there be three or four more movies like this. Hopefully, just like the Potter series, these movies will improve each time.

• * 1/2