Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

The child actors all pull their weight in the gothic tale.

Herald rating: * * *


Every Christmas deserves a panto and this season it's the first movie taken from Daniel Handler's multimillion-selling gothic-comedy children's books.

Yes, it might have aspirations of being another pocket money-threatening kid-lit film franchise, like that of a certain boy wizard. But, while it's fitfully funny and gives off an impressive grimness - think Roald Dahl meets Tim Burton - there's something that doesn't quite make it fly.

It would be easy to blame that on Jim Carrey in the role of lead villain Count Olaf, a pinstriped rooster of a thespian with delusions of talent who becomes the guardian then the nemesis of the orphaned Baudelaire children: Violet, Klaus and baby Sunny. He wants to do away with them to steal their inheritance.

It's hardly a role that calls for restraint and Carrey certainly knows it, whatever one of Olaf's weak disguises he's in. And he's got throwaway gags every second breath. It is quite a moment when he woos Meryl Streep - the kids' hapless Aunt Josephine - with the line: "Sure I get the good parking spots but who could love a man with a wooden leg and a face like a hen's arse?" Quite.

The kids' performances are terrific, too - especially Browning as the wise-before-her-time and inventive Violet.

But in its valiant efforts to capture Handler's verbiage - complete with Jude Law as narrator Snicket - it loses sight of whose story it's telling and why. And its episodic structure keeps the excitement levels lower than they should be for a film aiming at an audience of both Carrey and Snicket fans.

Unlike, say, the Potter films, it treats its world as an artificial storybook one, not as a plausible parallel world to ours. But like most pantos, it's fun while it lasts and the Snicketeers will undoubtedly get a kick out of meeting the likes of evil Olaf, the kids' Uncle Monty (Connolly) or see little Sunny demonstrate her most peculiar gifts.

CAST: Jim Carrey, Jude Law, Emily Browning, Timothy Spall, Billy Connolly, Meryl Streep
DIRECTOR: Brad Siberling
RATING: Not yet rated
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas from Thursday