Everything you're about to read will spoil your mind from future events and sully your spirit. If you dare read this, first gather your spirits and brave the thirteen year old movie of the Baudelaire children. Then, if you are still mobile, sink you...
Through all of my blogging about the new series in comparison to the original books and even the movie from 2004, I've never actually done a "what's good and bad about the film". Honestly, it's because I really love the film and I will watch it every day from beginning to end. However, nothing is perfect, and honestly, even the books have some bumps and bruises along the way as well. Oh what a world.
So today, I'm going to review the 2004 movie "A Series of Unfortunate Events", because I can. There was originally supposed to be a sequel, but clearly it got cancelled, so there's nothing else that the film can draw from the remainder of the book series. To begin...let's start with what I enjoyed about the film...besides pretty much everything.
1) Violet's hair combines the book's hairstyle in a way that makes sense-The one thing I've always found odd about the artwork for the book series is that, Violet's hair is always up. The story describes her as only tying her hair up when she needs to think about some invention idea, but yet in the artwork, the ribbon is always in her hair. Up. I thought that was the strangest thing, but of course, I'm no illustrator, so there's nothing I can do about that. The film however, combined the two. I've actually never noticed this before, but Violet's hair is half up. One side of her hair is braided together while the other side lays flat. It's definitely an interesting hairstyle choice, but it's one that combines the strange up-do/not-really-tied-up-do that Violet has in the book along with the act of her tying up her hair. If that makes any sense at all.
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2) Count Olaf- I've mentioned this beforehand, but there are some actors in this series that really kill the character, namely Joan Cusack. However, there are plenty of actors who play a character well, like Neil Patrick Harris and K. Todd Freeman. (I finally figured out who plays Mr. Poe! That's him). However, in the case of the character, there are some things that work and some things that don't work. (Count Olaf's new character and Lemony Snicket's presence in every scene for example). I say all this because whatever you think of Jim Carry, who played Olaf in the film, I thought it was a fantastic addition to the character. Jim Carry is an astounding actor, as is Count Olaf, so that's an already perfect fit to the character who has to pretend to be two more people throughout the film. Count Olaf is also noted to be rather intelligent and menacing in the book series, and this is really brought to life in the movie. For example, he uses eye drops to cry, he can switch from sweet, to menacing, and then to pitiful within a matter of seconds, and he's clever enough to realize towards the end of the film that Violet was trying to sign the document with her left hand. Talk about a great character! And...well...the dinosaur thing was just hilarious.
