Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Liam Aiken is a kid to be watched. His mannerisms seem wise for someone twice his age. I'd guess that's the mark of someone who finds acting as natural as tying his shoes and brushing his teeth. It's interesting to note that he was on the short list for the Harry Potter role, but was turned down because he wasn't British. I don't know -- if Renée Zellweger can play a Brit seamlessly, so (conceivably) could Aiken. In some ways, I can see him as better than Daniel Radcliffe (gasp! sacrilege!). But he's by no means the only good thing in the film -- the tale of three orphans being shuttled among "relatives" after their parents die in a fire. Jim Carrey plays Count Olaf, the worst of the relatives, and he is predictably hysterical (his prehistoric scene was a belly-laugh). He also gets to enact multiple characters -- a pie-in-the-sky kind of acting job for him, I'm sure. The sets are gorgeously rendered, perfectly odd and filled with so much minutiae that you'd have to see it multiple times to catch everything. The animation used at the beginning and during the credits is Tim-Burton-esque (think Nightmare Before Christmas), and the music is Danny-Elfman-esque. But it doesn't necessarily play as darkly as a Burton film. Sure, Count Olaf' s house is über-creepy, dank and nasty, and bad things keep happening to the orphans, but at least this film has a (semi-)happy ending. Speaking of the ending, I'm getting tired of films that assume they will be franchises and so have these ultra-wimpy endings (e.g ., Spiderman I, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) that allow them to pick up right where they left off. This will only get worse as studios sink the majority of their budgets into those flicks that can be franchised. Urg. Fight this insidious takeover! Go see small films like Northfork or Shaun of the Dead or Super Size Me. Now THAT is one we really don't need franchised.

year: 2004
length: 108 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0339291/combined