Considering the material it had to work with, A Series of Unfortunate Events is a fantastic film. The original books are childish, repetitive and generally uninteresting. The film is anything but. Creative and compelling, A Series of Unfortunate Events is as good a movie as can be made from its source. Especially considering how faithful it was.

A Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of books that, unfortunately, tells the same reworked story over and over. Three young children are orphaned and sent to live with Count Olaf, a distant relative, only to discover he wants nothing more than to find a way to steal their enormous fortune. After the children get away from him, they move to live with other distant, eccentric relatives and Olaf finds a way, in disguise, to show up at the scene and cause trouble.

I was in utter disbelief that the string of stories could be made into single good movie, and was happily surprised to be wrong. Instead of stepping back and using the source material as a frame for its story, it dives into the novellas and comes out fully saturated by them.

A Series of Unfortunate Events introduces us to the three children by way of their “special abilities” and tells the story through a Jude Law narration of Lemony Snicket, using most of its lines right from the books to forward the story. Text at the bottom of the screen tell us what young Sunny “probably meant” by each of her squeals, and short asides, such as one explaining that Aunt Petunia’s fear of Realtors is irrational, fill the film.

The film weaves together the first three books into a surprisingly cohesive story. The individual events are tied together with an overarching theme of peace and chaos, as the children realize they must take care of themselves and manage creative ways to take care of each other when no one else will. On the narrative level, the film brings in thelarger mystery of the real cause of the orphan’s parents death.

Jim Carrey, as Count Olaf, gets to be himself once again. And he seems to be enjoying it. Carrey makes Olaf a little less scary than he probably should be, but it’s worth the loss of tension for the addition of the humor.

Events’ finest asset is its often dark gothic set design and imagery, including backgrounds which are often surreal. The gothic tone is captured perfectly. It is all very real and very unreal. The setting is both American and English. The time frame is both past and present. The strange story is wholly unbelievable, yet hits close to home. And thus is it, appropriately, continually unfortunate, but very fortunate indeed.

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