Something NPH this way comes.
What They Say:
After the loss of their parents in a mysterious fire, the three Baudelaire children face trials and tribulations attempting to uncover dark family secrets.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
A Series of Unfortunate Events was one of those book series whose run overlapped around the same time as Harry Potter’s, yet unlike other children’s books released at the time, it didn’t know or care to be anything even remotely similar to the boy wizard’s adventures. Its narrative was characteristically dry and witty, especially for a children’s book series, subject matters were horribly and unabashedly dark, and the story always made a point to illustrate how much more intelligent and resourceful children were in comparison to their clueless adult counterparts. In that sense, it served as the alternative series for children to obsess about who leaned more towards a world of sad, sarcastic realisms than fantasy.
But for some reason, the series never truly reached the same amount of fame and notoriety as its magical world peer. A movie starring Jim Carrey as the main villain Count Olaf, didn’t do well enough to warrant a sequel, and upon the book’s final volume, it seemed to fade away into obscurity. That is until Netflix picked it up to be adapted into a series.
For the uninitiated, A Series of Unfortunate Events covers the story of newly orphaned siblings Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, as they hop from one inept caretaker to another, all while escaping the clutches of the evil Count Olaf who constantly disguises himself in an attempt to become their caretaker and thus steal the Baudelaire family fortune. Throughout the children’s travels, narrator Lemony Snicket slowly reveals bits and pieces about his own life, which end up intersecting with the Boudelaire’s in an unexpected way—mainly in the form of a secret society.
Netflix’s adaptation covers the first four books of the series, each book spanning the course of two 50-ish minute episodes. And while its take on the source material differs in medium from the 2006 movie, it still takes some cues from it as well. In particular is its noticeable attention to casting well-known actors for the adults throughout the series. Not only are we introduced to Neil Patrick Harris and Patrick Warburton as Count Olaf and Lemony Snicket respectively, but other adults from Will Arnett to Joan Cusack pop up as well. Even ignoring the fact that such well-established actors would be distracting especially for such a bleak series; the fact remains that the more major of these roles simply feel miscast.
NPH and Warburton as Olaf and Snicket particularly feel like odd choices only further underlined when considering how much screen time both get (arguably more than the supposedly starring children). Harris’ take on Olaf feels like one big contradiction. While he’s been given the proper prosthetics and makeup to appear like the elderly yet still capably evil Count Olaf, his voice remains his standard one. Similarly, Warburton’s large build and deep voice feels counter to Snicket’s character of a broken, meagerly man constantly mourning the loss of his beloved Beatrice. And while you can argue that the uncanny, almost paradoxical nature of the castings were intentional in both cases, it still makes for thoroughly distracting performances.
The same can be said about the set pieces making up the SoUE world, though in this case such feels more fitting in its unfittingness. Like the movie before it, the world is very Tim Burton-esque, with its winding roads and stark contrasts between cartoonishly bright, and depressingly washed out. Though the feel of the overall world never feels so impossibly drab to the point that it’s unappealing; the eccentricity and sarcasm in the series’ writing paired with its more colorful visuals is more reminiscent of Pushing Daisies in aesthetic, with a certain amount of Zooey Deschanel quirkiness that’s become appealing to a much larger audience as of late.
In terms of story, this Netflix adaptation does a lukewarm job of bringing Snicket’s stories to life, though that could be in part due to how text-reliant its source material is. The way Snicket wrote his stories was heavily embedded in narrative—his eccentric and rambling writing style defining the series more so than any single character or event. And rather than tweaking this to fit a more visual medium, Netflix has instead tried to keep as in-line with their adaptation as possible, only to better highlight how unfitting a 1:1 adaptation would be. Seeing Snicket on screen narrate the Boudelaire’s lives is interesting at first and highly reminiscent of something you’d see out of The Twilight Zone, though the major problem is that like the books, he just doesn’t shut up. Warburton/Snicket’s narrations last for such an unnecessarily long amount of time and are filled with so many asides and ramblings that make for a far better read than watch.
As such, we end up with far less time to witness the Baudelaire children, the supposed focus of the series. Rather than really getting a feel for what the kids are like and how they interact with each other as a family with no parents, we end up seeing them more as simple cardboard cutouts meant to react to whatever caretaker-of-the-week and Olaf scheme is pitted in front of them. I mention the kids’ relationship as a family in particular mainly because I honestly forget that Klaus and Violet are siblings and not romantic interests—their on-scene chemistry leans more towards a Greg and Marcia Brady one which could have easily been un-creepified if we only had a bit more time to better establish each child outside of “this one invents, this one reads, and this one bites things (and is occasionally CG’d due to stunts and probable baby actor labor laws).” The additional layer of secret-society mystery and misdirection that wasn’t as prominently depicted in the books only further muddles things.
What results is an end-product that tries so hard to be something different while somehow still being slave to the source material—an okay adaptation overall.
In Summary:
Even with some embellishments here and there, Netlifx’s take on A Series of Unfortunate Events still feels like a straight adaptation of the books—strengths and weaknesses included. Sadly, Snicket’s iconic rambling narratives don’t translate well to the small screen, and casting choices and story focus seem to spotlight everything except the children the series is about, making for a “good, not great” experience overall. If anything, I am hopeful for a second season out of curiosity on how later books will be adapted more than anything else.
Grade: C+/B-
