Page vs. Screen: A Series of Unfortunate Events

I'm going to say something that seemingly a lot of people don't know; different media platforms require different qualities to be popular. What makes a book good won't always make a TV series good. What makes a film good won't always make a console game good. When you expand a single platform product, alterations need to be made to make sure they succeed on their own merit, while still appealing to die-hard fans. Sometimes this happens, and everyone is happy. Often it isn't. Guess which one A Series of Unfortunate Events is?

Don't get me wrong, the film adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events is not a bad film. Jim Carrey is lovably hate-able as all incarnations of Count Olaf, Billy Connolly and Meryl Streep are both stellar in their minor roles, and Timothy Spall, though arguably a rather basic role for his talents, portrays a frighteningly accurate Mr. Poe. The children are probably the least interesting characters in the film, which reflects the book nicely, as three ordinary (well, ordinary compared to the world around them) kids struggle to deal with the weird and ever-changing world around them. The script is slick enough to not feel all over the place, despite the jumpy narrative that comes with mushing three books together. The film is good. The books are better.

It's not hard to see why A Series of Unfortunate Events managed to get a film deal considering its inspiration. The books target a type of child audience no one thought even existed. The gloomy, yet humorous lexis appeal directly to young teenagers that may be feeling similar emotions. The consistent 4th wall breaking helps ease the reader if things get too dark, and at times Snicket feels like a guide, or a companion, giving you a tour of these children's terrible lives. That's the kind of immersion all children's books need, regardless of genre, and it there was a children's literary canon, you can bet you hide I'd be pulling for this to be in it.

So what's the difference between the books and the film? Well, Lemony Snicket isn't funny anymore. Jude Law plays it straight as the unorthodox author who lives in a clock. Carrey takes the comedy torch for the film. The kids don't stay with Mr. Poe like they do in the first book, and, sadly, Olaf's henchmen don't have nearly as big of a part as they do in the books. But overall, not a whole lot. And that's the problem.

A Series of Unfortunate Events: the film, doesn't know what it wants to be. It wants to appeal to kids and parents, and it wants to be a series, so it's light on the graphic imagery that the books contain. But it's still there, and can be quite unforgivably brutal for a PG film. The moral of the film is that good things will eventually override the bad things, but that doesn't really make sense when not a single good thing happens to these kids. But you can't have a big kids blockbuster without a moral. The books don't really have a moral, they're more like a book-umentary. And this is the films big problem. It doesn't know whether to stay true to the source material, or go with its own flow. It ends up in the middle and makes for a slightly disorientating experience.

If you want to see the film, do. You'll enjoy it, probably. But because it is neither a literal film version of thhe book, nor a separate entity from its print counterpart, I can't choose the film over the books.

BOOK OR FILM: BOOK