You surely know the narrator of this dark, eccentric and yet empowering comedy drama is setting the tone for it when he warns right at the start: The movie you are about to see is extremely unpleasant.
The narrator then quickly offers reasons why you should run to another theatre that may be screening a typical cheerful movie. Some adults, who might have read the decidedly darker novels that led to the film, Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events, may agree with the narrator (Jude Law), complaining at the end that they expected a full-bodied dark fantasy like the third installment in the famous series, Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban.
If the previews are any indication, children, who filled the New York theatre with plenty of laughter, and their guardians and parents, who came out of the screening with sheepish grins, have already spread the pleasant word about the new film. Some might even have complained that the film was just 94 minutes long!
The children in this film are smarter, good-hearted and enterprising while the adults are mostly sleazeballs. It is fun to see the children learn quite fast to survive in a world of greed and skullduggery by using their ingenuity, though they face dangers from time to time.
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But for all its fun, the film doesn't work as a coherent, well-knit piece and feels like a collection of fast-moving episodes of survival in an adult-dominated world. Yet, the film is on its way to be a hit, never mind how crowded the market is.
But its chance of overtaking the recent hit The Incredibles, which has grossed about $232 million in North America and is still very much around, does not look bright. It might be able to overtake The Polar Express that started off anemically but has remained a steady grosser, with a $110 million haul in five weeks.
Some of the Christmas releases that have made a lot of money in America, Elf, for instance, have not had a big market abroad. But since the novels that inspired this film have been translated into 39 languages and are best-sellers across Europe, Australia, Japan and several Latin American countries, there is enough curiosity about the film.
Much of the credit for Lemony Snicket's success will go to Jim Carrey, who uses his voice better than the face muscles, in creating various gleefully villainous personas.
Based on three of Daniel Handler's books written under the name of Lemony Snicket, the film starts with the orphaned Baudelaire kids following a fire. Each child has a different personality: Klaus (Liam Aiken) is the brain and a voracious reader; Violet (Emily Browning) is full of imagination and resourcefulness and Sunny (played by twins Kara and Shelby Hoffman) is the toddler with plenty of charm and an amusing gibberish lingo. But beware, Sunny also loves to bite.
The children have lost the parents but they are entitled to a vast inheritance. The executor of the family fortune (Timothy Spall) takes the children to their 'nearest relative' who lives 'only 37 blocks away.' And that happens to be Count Olaf (Jim Carrey).
Among the many 'relatives' who think that the kids don't deserve to inherit the money, Olaf is the most cunning and amusing creature. He offers to be their guardian but as he makes the kids cook and serve him and his buddies, he is merrily plotting their death.
The kids must then urgently think how to save themselves from Olaf. But Olaf never gives up and he is always around the corner as the kids are bounced from one relative to another.
Into the sea of villainy, Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep) walks in bringing with her paranoia of practically everything. In one of the most hilarious situations in the movie, she earnestly announces why she is scared of welcome mats: 'You could fall and decapitate yourselves!'
Despite the encounters and misadventures the kids have with the grown-ups, much of their energy is spent in outwitting Olaf. Though Carrey is the mainstay of the film, there are times you feel you are seeing too much of him, never mind the brilliant disguises.
With so much of Carrey, we must not overlook the delightful Billy Connolly as the herpetologist Uncle Monty, and Streep as the scared aunt who doesn't seem to realise she is living in a precariously placed house over a lake. But it is the kids, especially the twins who play the toddler, who are the real scene-stealers.
The film's dark but arresting look is created by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and production designer Rick Heinrichs who had worked on Tim Burton's period drama Sleepy Hollow a few years ago.
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