Like the “Potter” films, the grown-ups are well-cast, including Cedric the Entertainer and Catherine O’Hara as equally dim law enforcement. Olaf’s gang is a mostly silent laundry list of “I’ve seen him before,” including Luis Guzman, Craig Ferguson, and Jennifer Coolidge. Also like “Potter,” “Snicket” is filled with delightful production design, but it seems even less concerned with connecting to reality or consistency than “Potter.” Everything is a cross between Gotham City, Edward Gorey, and the City of Lost Children. Count Olaf’s vampiric palace—located in an ordinary street of what appears to be Victorian London—is all blackened rot and dilapidation. Aunt Josephine’s tottering stilt house is like something out of Dr. Suess, and the countryside where Olaf takes the children to get hit by a train is as faded as anything in “A Very Long Engagement.” Curdled Cave and Horrid Harbor, both near Lake Lachrymose, live up to their names, but in an amusement park kind of way. Aunt Josephine’s sleeves are enormously poofy, Violet wears tall, lace-up boots and bloomers, and Klaus’s collar is perpetually half-poking out of his sweater, perhaps an allusion to Jim Carrey in “Eternal Sunshine.” Three of the movie’s four Oscar nominations have to do with costumes, makeup, and art direction, and it richly deserves them.
Oh, how I wanted to like this movie more than I did. It has precisely the tone that big budget fantasies today are missing. I don’t know if children will appreciate the dark humor surrounding the deaths of entire families or if they will understand how wise it is for the actors playing the children to hardly ever emote. But I enjoyed it. Maybe the sequel will give them more to do than watch Count Olaf croak off their relatives one by one.
Finished Monday, February 21, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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