In the world of acting, there are performers who can disappear into their roles as well as those who simply can't escape being themselves and/or dragging their accompanying baggage into their parts. Then there are those who occasionally fall into both categories. A perfect example of the latter is Jim Carrey in "Lemon Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Based on the first several books penned by Snicket -- a.k.a. Daniel Handler -- the film is a dark if comedic fairy tale about a count who wants to off his three young charges in order to get his greedy hands on their sizeable inheritance. I haven't read any of the wildly popular books so I can't attest to the wisdom of casting Carrey ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "The Mask") as the nefarious character (that is, outside the financial implications).
I can say with some certainty, however, that there's a bit too much of the comedic actor in Count Olaf. While that will likely delight his fans and continue to put off those who aren't, the actor's various characterizations, voices, rubbery physical antics and more quickly drown out the rest of the material.
All of which is too bad because there's always room for kid-based, dark cinematic fare, at least if it's handled correctly. After all, that's exactly what all of Grimm's Fairy Tales were and have been over the past two centuries.
Unfortunately, it appears that director Brad Silberling ("Moonlight Mile," "City of Angels") either let or encouraged Carry to run amok during the filming process. While I'll admit that some of the presumably improvised dialogue and other behavior is funny or at least amusing, a more toned-down approach to the over-the-top mania probably would have suited the material far better than what we have here.
A better script wouldn't have hurt either. Many children's tales are natural episodic (to better cope with short attention spans and/or truncated bedtime reading sessions), but that doesn't necessarily translate that well to the big screen.
That's the case here where the plot -- adapted by Robert Gordon ("Men in Black II," "Galaxy Quest") -- hops, skips and jumps around as the kids travel from one family relative to the next. While the individual segments -- featuring the likes of Carrey, Meryl Streep and Billy Connolly as those distant family members -- aren't half bad, they don't exactly add up to a successful, collective whole.
Those sequences and the overall film, however, certainly look terrific -- with imaginative and handsome production work -- leading one to think that perhaps the film was inspired by the wonderfully wacky work of Tim Burton. Unlike, say, "Edward Scissorhands," however, this effort is mostly missing the charming warmth and human element to offset the darkness.
That's not to say it's completely absent as Connolly's ("The Last Samurai," "Timeline") reptile-collector character exudes it, but he's not around long enough to make enough of a difference. Nor is Streep ("The Manchurian Candidate," "The Hours") who delivers a daffy comedic performance as the kids' neurotic aunt that lives in a precariously located cliffside home and warns them of all the household dangers they could face.
Emily Browning ("Ghost Ship," "Darkness Falls") and Liam Aiken ("Road to Perdition," "Good Boy!") are rather good as the older kids, while interchangeable twins Kara and Shelby Hoffman (making their feature debut) get some of the bigger laughs via their baby babble to English subtitle translations (although that running gag eventually wears out its welcome). A host of known or at least recognizable faces -- including Dustin Hoffman, Cedric the Entertainer, Catherine O'Hara, Timothy Spall, Luis Guzman and others -- appear in various small to bit parts, but don't/can't do much with their sketchily drawn characters.
The busiest actor of 2004, Jude Law ("Closer," "Alfie") voices the title character who repeatedly warns the viewer that this isn't a happy fairy tale. At other times, he states that the time is appropriate to head to another theater or to even run out of the theater, home or airplane in which one might be watching the film in case it's too dark for them.
While the effort clearly isn't bad enough to make one want to do the latter, it's never as good as the dire predictions of darkness promise. And that's all thanks to an episodic plot and too much of Carrey's over-the-top antics that respectively undermine and overwhelm the production.
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