Through all of my blogging about the new series in comparison to the original books and even the movie from 2004, I've never actually done a "what's good and bad about the film". Honestly, it's because I really love the film and I will watch it every day from beginning to end. However, nothing is perfect, and honestly, even the books have some bumps and bruises along the way as well. Oh what a world.

So today, I'm going to review the 2004 movie "A Series of Unfortunate Events", because I can. There was originally supposed to be a sequel, but clearly it got cancelled, so there's nothing else that the film can draw from the remainder of the book series. To begin...let's start with what I enjoyed about the film...besides pretty much everything.

1) Violet's hair combines the book's hairstyle in a way that makes sense-The one thing I've always found odd about the artwork for the book series is that, Violet's hair is always up. The story describes her as only tying her hair up when she needs to think about some invention idea, but yet in the artwork, the ribbon is always in her hair. Up. I thought that was the strangest thing, but of course, I'm no illustrator, so there's nothing I can do about that. The film however, combined the two. I've actually never noticed this before, but Violet's hair is half up. One side of her hair is braided together while the other side lays flat. It's definitely an interesting hairstyle choice, but it's one that combines the strange up-do/not-really-tied-up-do that Violet has in the book along with the act of her tying up her hair. If that makes any sense at all.

2) Count Olaf- I've mentioned this beforehand, but there are some actors in this series that really kill the character, namely Joan Cusack. However, there are plenty of actors who play a character well, like Neil Patrick Harris and K. Todd Freeman. (I finally figured out who plays Mr. Poe! That's him). However, in the case of the character, there are some things that work and some things that don't work. (Count Olaf's new character and Lemony Snicket's presence in every scene for example). I say all this because whatever you think of Jim Carry, who played Olaf in the film, I thought it was a fantastic addition to the character. Jim Carry is an astounding actor, as is Count Olaf, so that's an already perfect fit to the character who has to pretend to be two more people throughout the film. Count Olaf is also noted to be rather intelligent and menacing in the book series, and this is really brought to life in the movie. For example, he uses eye drops to cry, he can switch from sweet, to menacing, and then to pitiful within a matter of seconds, and he's clever enough to realize towards the end of the film that Violet was trying to sign the document with her left hand. Talk about a great character! And...well...the dinosaur thing was just hilarious.

Now I know that there are a lot of people who believe he was a bad casting choice for this film because he was too goofy and too Jim Carrey. And I can see that in a way. I can see why people would think, "Oh goodness, this is the worst actor for this role." However, I still had fun laughing at every scene, so I guess we can all just agree that every one has a different kind of humor. This kind of humor happens to be one I enjoy.

3) The actress for Sunny- I think Sunny was played by twins, but I can't remember. Anyway, it was a great casting job! Her lines were on cue, she was funny, she enjoyed biting things, similar to the book, and...she was just so cute!

4) The train track scene- This scene wasn't in the book, but it was such a fun edition. It was new, it was entertaining, it incorporated every single aspect of the children's talents into one scheme, and it had a rather funny interaction between Sunny and Mr. Poe. I just really liked the invention scene. Violet can literally make something from nothing, and this scene emphasized just how far her brain can go to make anything around her work. It was just so much fun to watch. Plus..Sunny was hilarious!

5) The Hook Handed Man- I mentioned this before, but the hook handed man is one of my favorite characters in this franchise. He's much more intimidating in the books than he is in the film and even in the Netflix series, but I definitely think the movie version does a good job of being funny and terrifying. When he's with Count Olaf or the other henchman, he's just an ordinary guy who's doing his job. In fact, I'd say he's kind of like Olaf's second in command; he's the only other acting troupe seen between the Putannesca scene and the wedding at the end of the film. And lets just be honest here, seeing him come out of nowhere to attack Klaus in the tower was pretty scary for at least a half second. Like...we get a calm and sad moment of Klaus realizing that Olaf had burned their house down, and then...

WHABAM!

"Here's Hookie!!!"

Even today, I'm like..."Yikes! That was a bit close for comfort!"

6) The Al Funcoot Play- I don't know how the play went down in the book because it's been a while since I've read The Bad Beginning, but I do remember that two out of three children were there and there was an uncomfortable wait as the kids knew that the entire play was simply cooked up to marry Violet. The one thing I liked about it in the movie was that it was both entertaining and funny. It was made to be taken seriously with the undertone of seriously marrying Violet Baudelaire. And this is AFTER the long strings of murder upon murder within the past hour or so of the film! I liked the flow, I liked how it went on in the background as Klaus was trying to rescue Sunny, I liked the false scare when he was climbing the tower, and I just liked the play as a whole. There was a deleted scene that shows Klaus escaping the play during his cue, but I liked the new cut better because it seems to me like he did his scene, and then had a limited amount of time to get Sunny down in order to rescue Violet. And I'll admit...the entire scene was just hilarious. It mixed drama and comedy, and I couldn't get enough of it!

7) Aunt Josephine- I liked her character. Even though she gave up the kids so that she wouldn't be killed, (like it helped her in the end with the grammar correction), she was still a mixture of helpful, scared, unreasonable, and kind. Plus, she was pretty amusing. Meryl Streep played her. I had no idea!!!!!!

8) The update to Uncle Monty- In the story, Uncle Monty had an entire book to have his character developed. In the film, his role is one of the shortest ones in the film, but they give him such a fun character that can help identify the children with him almost instantly. He's caring, funny and eccentric, but with an added tragic backstory that the children can relate to. You feel comfortable with him almost immediately, and just...his introduction and his happiness at seeing the children, especially Violet...it was so sweet!

9) This scene...

https://youtu.be/Hx1H9fDapz0

10) Lemony Snicket- The one thing I liked about Lemony Snicket in this film is the fact that he stays in the shadows. You don't get to see his face period. You see a silhouette or just him typing on the typewriter, which is one of my favorite contraptions by the way! I've always wanted a type writer! I have to wait though, but in the meantime, he's kept an elusive secret, just like he's supposed to be in the book series.

11) The update to the tower scene- I've mentioned this before in the original post of this blog book, but I liked the scene where Violet climbs up the large tower to get Sunny. I also liked though, how in the movie, it was Klaus who did it. Though I did like the update in the Netflix series as well, the direction that the movie took this scene helped to show that Klaus is not completely helpless and that the children can use other not-as-great talents to try and help each other. Violet has tried to read big words in order to save Klaus and Klaus has had to try and plug a few gears together to think like Violet to save people. While Violet doesn't try to pull from an expansive vocabulary in the movie, Klaus does attempt to put himself in Violet's shoes for a second in order to rescue Sunny. It seemed like the perfect scene too. He's on a time-limit to save Sunny in order to save Violet, there's the hook-handed man trying to kill him, he finds out that Count Olaf burned his house down...I just loved it all!

12) The atmosphere- The original books had a bit of a grim tone. Nothing the kids did ever turned out well. People died. People were eaten. Schemes constantly failed. Horrifying secrets were discovered and eventually, their perception of good and bad was distorted into the gray box we all learn as adults. Everything was miserable and gloomy. And that's how the movie felt. It felt dark. It felt like happiness being shattered. It felt terrifying as Count Olaf kept finding them and tricking each adult with a clever disguise again and again and again. There seemed to be no end. Even at the end of the film when Olaf gets arrested, he still escapes and is at large. He's just that good at his craft. There seems to be no end to his reign. It felt appropriately scary, appropriately calm, and appropriately happy when it needed to be and I loved it to pieces.

13) The tent scene- There's a scene after Count Olaf smacks Klaus and then sends the kids upstairs. They make a tent and try to adapt to their horrible circumstances....they make a haven.

It was cute. And it felt like a happy break from the misery they had been enduring. It doesn't last long, but it's a brief moment of piece in their dark world....

14) The Incredibly Deadly Viper and Sunny- Count Olaf almost steals Violet and Klaus away, and Sunny decides to foil the plan by proving that the Incredibly Deadly Viper is completely harmless. Her laughter and their playfulness in the scene is so cute...I just love it!

15) The ending- Though this movie only covers the first three books, it still ended in a similar manner to how the books ended. The ending of A Series of Unfortunate Events was ambiguous. You don't know what happens to the kids. There's a mixed atmosphere of happiness, gloom, and uncertainty of what to expect, and that's how the movie ended. There's some misfortune, so happiness, some slight sliver of joy, and a measure of uncertainty with the journey of the children still incomplete. I thought it was well executed.

I think it's pretty obvious that I'm a big fan of this movie. However, there are one or two things that do bother me about this film that I want to address, just for the sake of fairness.

1) The children's clothes- The one thing that I thought was odd about the Baudelaire children was that they wore these very dark clothes throughout the entirety of the film. Granted, the books didn't seem to change the children's clothes all that much either, but in the beginning of the movie, we clearly see the parents wearing these bright colors. (Like bright green). Maybe if they were mourning clothes, but they wear these same clothes even before their parents were murdered. I just...it does stick out like a sore thumb. With a wart. That has frostbite.

2) The opening scene- I get that the opening scene is supposed to be a contrast to the story of the Baudelaire children. However, I actually get bored with it really quick. It's...ugh. I guess the point is that it's so over-the-top happy and fairytale-like in comparison to real life: the story of the Baudelaires. I still find it boring though. Thankfully it's short.

3) Sunny- This isn't actually a complaint more than it's just an observation. However, I noticed in the books that Sunny's one strand of hair is always black. Now that could just be because she doesn't have much hair, so it's just one line drawn...but I've always assumed that Sunny in the book has the same colored hair as her siblings. In fact, even in the film their mother has brown hair!

And in both the movie and the book, Sunny is remarked to look very much like her mother. So why isn't her hair brown? It's blonde! And not just in the film, but in the Netflix adaptation as well! Who's idea was that?!

4) Klaus' glasses- The one thing odd about the film was that they removed Klaus' glasses. Why? Because he looked too much like Harry Potter from the film of the same name....

Really? That's why you changed the character? Klaus clearly wears glasses for a brief moment in the film, even if they are reading glasses. AND HE LOOKS NOTHING LIKE HARRY POTTER!

DON'T TELL ME THESE TWO LOOK ANYTHING ALIKE! BECAUSE THEY DON'T!!! At least not to me anyway. I don't like Harry Potter, so I wouldn't know, but....THEY LOOK NOTHING ALIKE!!!!!

5) What VFD?- I'm going to admit this right now: I saw the movie before I read the book. Now, this was common when I was a kid; this happened with the original Willy Wonka movie. However, because of this, I had what I consider to be an advantage which was that I was being introduced to the story blind. Now, the original few books of the series, the first four to be exact, made no mention of VFD whatsoever and there was supposed to be a sequel, so I can be a little lenient with that. However, because the movie wrapped up on an ambiguous note, it didn't leave you feeling incomplete. I mean, when I read the series I wanted more of as a kid in love with the movie, of course I wanted a sequel! However, the movie didn't leave much of a mystery to it. Even at the end of the series, you feel like there's an itch you still can't quite scratch. There's still questions you kind of want answers to. But the movie doesn't feel like that. I mentioned this little point many chapters ago, but the movie barely gets into VFD. Which isn't bad; you din't want to get there too early. However, there isn't much of a sense of a mystery. There's an ambiguous ending, as the series should have, but nothing in that film that makes you think...well, what was that? What is this strange thing? There are only three occasions that I can think of that hint at VFD, and those things seem to wrap up close to the third act: the spyglass is nodded at twice with Monty, then Josephine, and then explained that they were part of a group (Or club as Klaus calls it) and that some people were cruel while some tried to stop the trouble caused. Then there was a thing about their parents knowing they would die (which I honestly don't even understand to this day), and that's it. The only other nod to VFD is in the opening scene where the children are exploring their burnt down home and there's a tiny little thing in the desk by the spyglass that says VFD on it. But that's it. That's all you see. Maybe if the sequel had gotten around to being produced, this would be better, but as a stand-alone nod, it's not very helpful.

6) The time stamp with Uncle Monty- This is the only plot hole that I've sort of rolled my eyes at when going through this film. See, when the kids first arrive at Uncle Monty's house, he says that they're going to Peru tomorrow morning. Okay, that's all good. But then a few shots later, we see them walking to the front door to greet Stephano. Now this seems like it's shot on a different day, but you could be like, "Well, maybe he got there late in the evening. That's fine." But then after Uncle Monty's death, Stephano/Olaf is like, "Yeah, we were leaving for Peru tomorrow" and now I'm like...'okay...someone got two scripts mixed up or just didn't have their daily dose of caffeine because this is sounding very loopy right now.

7) Olaf's Sentence

This is actually something that confused me both as a kid and an adult. For several reasons. When Olaf is first arrested, the narration by Snicket explains that before being sentenced to life in prison, he was to do everything the children had been forced to do because of him. And then we proceed to see all the trials the children suffered in the film. 

First, all the trials they endured were deadly. Was the jury expecting Count Olaf to die or solve the puzzle himself before his death? Or were they going to bail him out at the last second? 

Second, half of those trials weren't even caused by Olaf! Aunt Josephine's house crumbling to pieces? Unless he's mother nature's kid, that wasn't his fault! The leeches chewing up the boat? Aunt Josephine brought it on herself by eating the banana before they left! Child me was very confused by why these were involved in the scene. I'm guessing it's for comedy purposes. 

Third, child me never understood why all those scenes happened and then he just got away. I understand now that his sentence was overturned before those things happened since my audio processing is much better, but that's still a weird thing to show and as a kid it was confusing to watch. 

8) The deleted scenes

I know I shouldn't nitpick at this, but when I saw the original trailer for this movie recently, I was actually irritated that the scenes shown in the trailer weren't in the movie. Allow me to demonstrate: 

https://youtu.be/4ErlhM1NaZA

1. The trailer featured more mystery and intrigue with Olaf's tower and more interaction between him and the children regarding his odd behavior and the secrets he kept. These were scenes that were probably cut to save time, but that probably would have added more to the tower Olaf clearly told them to stay out of. I really feel like they were planning to build to it, but it seems like whatever they were planning was cut out. 

2. I feel like the ending was supposed to be a smidge different and it might have actually helped with my current issue with the scenes we get of Olaf's sentence. Perhaps they were supposed to show what really happened, but it too got cut and was simply replaced with dialogue. Which seems like a shame because that exit looked seriously cool. 

They're just little things, I know. I mean, there are some Jim Carrey scenes that I think were definitely good to cut, but it's little things like these that I felt could have maybe added more to the story, but didn't. It's sort of like how in the live action Cinderella movie they cut somethings that added more scenes and in-depth character to everyone, especially the main. And I feel they would have been much better left in, but were probably cut out for time's sake. Which I don't understand really. Why spend that money making the scene that could build character and then cut it? Some movies are over 4 hours long. Unless you have to pay someone per scene or something I don't mind seeing a few brief seconds more of character or plot development.

And...honestly, that's about it....I can't really think of anything else from the film that I didn't like or thought was odd. I liked the acting, the pacing, some of the things added...it was nicely put together. And to Daniel Handler....

I know you have a resentment towards the movie that you helped work on. But I just want to let you know, not that you'll ever read this...I thought it was brilliantly put together. I'm honestly shocked you prefer the Netflix series over this. But that's just me.

With that said, this is my official critical review of the 2004 film...A Series of Unfortunate Events.