SCREEN SCENE: Fortunate viewers will enjoy these ‘Events’

Published 4:00 pm Wednesday, December 22, 2004

If J.K. Rowling lit the flame of reading for pleasure for an entire generation of kids with her “Harry Potter” books, then Lemony Snicket carries the torch down a dark and foreboding alley, leading his young readers on a positively Gothic foray into the realms of Mary Shelley, Edward Gorey and Edgar Allen Poe. Parents needn’t worry about their darlings succumbing to the Dark Side, though – Snicket’s macabre stories are cloaked in humorous irony, and his themes of hope and family shine through the gloom and doom.

“A Series of Unfortunate Events” currently encompasses 10 books, with three more planned by Mr. Snicket (isn’t that the greatest pseudonym ever!), aka 34-year-old San Francisco author Daniel Handler. The events in question occur to a trio of well-bred, intelligent and resourceful – but oh so unfortunate – children: Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire.

Having led a comfortable, nurtured life until the movie opens, the trio suddenly find themselves orphaned as the result of a suspicious fire. The courts place them in the care of their closest relative, a vain, unscrupulous actor named Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), whom they’ve never met, and their misery redoubles as Olaf out-villains every storybook stepmother, ogre or sorcerer from the Brothers Grimm to Voldemort.

(If Carrey’s stomach-turning performance as The Grinch has you thinking twice about seeing this film, you’re not alone. But take heart: His character waits in the wings for much of the story, and when on screen, his overblown antics are the blackly comic antidote to the orphans’ bleak situation.)

When Olaf’s scheme to do away with the children and keep their fortune goes awry, the siblings get sent to live with other “relatives,” including Scottish comic Billy Connolly as a dotty but loving herpetologist and Meryl Streep as a dowager who’s paralyzed with a fear of everything from exploding doorknobs to realtors. Count Olaf pops up in various bad disguises at every turn until he hits upon a perfectly legal plan to get his hands on the Baudelaire estate.

While the adult cast members may steal top billing, it’s the children who steal every woeful scene. And stealing a scene from Jim Carrey is no easy feat. Emily Browning plays 14-year-old inventor Violet with serious aplomb, and Liam Aiken is focused and reserved as voracious reader Klaus. Toddler Sunny, played by twins Kara and Shelby Hoffman, has no trace of her siblings’ reservations and unabashedly gurgles, coos and bites her way through the movie.

Director Brad Silberling and his team of top producers and filmmakers snapped up the movie rights to the first three “Unfortunate Events” books while they were still in manuscript form, and took several months to design the look of the film before production got underway. The world the Baudelaire orphans inhabit is mostly Victorian in architecture and costume, but it’s also fantastically unhinged in time. Cars are fitted with reel-to-reel tape players instead of stereos, but also have chirping remote door locks. The entire movie was filmed on soundstages in London and Los Angeles, including scenes in caves, lakes and hurricanes, so every aspect of the visuals was under the filmmakers’ control.

Snicket’s delicate and old-fashioned writing style permeates the film, thanks to frequent narration by Jude Law. The author aims to keep his young fans intrigued by cleverly hinting at clues and connections to Baudelaire family secrets that never quite get resolved. If director Silberling and his team plan to continue the saga with more movies based on later “Unfortunate Events” books, then we viewers will be fortunate indeed.

“Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”

Rated PG for thematic elements, scary situations and brief language

Starring: Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, Emily Browning, Liam Aiken, Timothy Spall

Directed by: Brad Silberling

Length: One hour 53 minutes

Now playing at: Astoria Gateway Cinemas, Cannes Cinema Center in Seaside and Neptune Theatre in Long Beach, Wash.

Short take: A trio of woeful orphans must use their talents and family ties to overcome the wiles of Jim Carrey as their unscrupulous guardian. Director Brad Silberling goes to great lengths to meticulously bring to life the Gothic but humorous world of author Lemony Snicket.

Rating: Three stars (out of four)