I think that I am terribly forgiving of well-made films. It's not that I really disagree with the middle-of-the-road reviews that this film is getting (in fact, I've got my own list of problems that I'm prepared to pile on). But I think that I just weigh these things differently than some other critics. The gap between aesthetic beauty and pretty much everything else (i.e. plot, character, thematic resonance, emotional complexity) is far larger in Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express than with Lemony Snicket. Lemony Snicket doesn't quite dazzle as strongly, but it's also not nearly as sappy or condescending. Still, there IS a gap. That Lemony Snicket is far easier to respect and recommend in good conscience than Polar Express doesn't do any more to distract from the fact that my recommendation is still primarily based on the visual splendor of the piece.

This is perhaps THE primary thing that I ever hope to get out of the movies: literal escapism, the sensation of just losing yourself to a well-crafted movie. The problem, I realize, is that movies are better made today than they were just ten years ago. Garry Marshall is incompetent. He was actually a better filmmaker ten years ago; he seems to have lost his mind these days. I don't think that I have ever seen a major studio picture as badly made as The Princess Diaries. That Princess Diaries got made at all, much less had a sequel, seems to prove to me that "chick flick" fans are incredibly desperate and will settle for pretty much anything. I think that Garry Marshall is an exception though. The real problem with American cinema today is that almost EVERYBODY is not only competent, but downright talented. But they aren't artists. They have the same genetic material as Orson Welles, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, et cetera, but they sure as hell don't have the heart, brains, courage or soul.

Van Helsing and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle were crap. They really didn't work and were exhausting to watch. But I responded to them; I forgave them a little bit more than other critics who flat out foamed at the mouth. I was taken back at how much sheer work has been put into these films. They were nothing but arias. Dabbling as a filmmaker I learned very fast, by my second video project, that you can't have nothing but arias. When you have nothing but arias, the effect of each aria is greatly diluted. For my purposes, an aria was simply video cut to music. For their purposes it's also an action sequence. They were very well-made action sequences, but they didn't seem to grasp the idea of aria-restraint.

These were obnoxious movies, but Brett Ratner's Red Dragon is the one that really has me worried. He reminds of Nietzsche’s perspective toward Napoleon, this synthesis between the unmensch and the ubermensch. I tend to find myself describing him as a four-year-old with a shotgun. He has this powerful weapon and he knows how to aim it, fire it and hit something. But he hasn't developed the sort of moral consciousness that would necessitate using it. He shoots at stuff just to listen to the pop and see his target explode. He hasn't any perspective or any insight into his material. He can make movies very well, but he is unable to make them any good. Kevin Bray, another apparent film school brat who helmed the remake of Walking Tall, is in the same category. Walking Tall is PG-13-coated fascism and pornography, a revenge picture sanitized and aestheticized for the viewing public. It's the Fox News nation incarnate. I haven't seen Ratner's After the Sunset, but I probably should as it seems to have the same disease.

I'm not really sure that we can even say that they are talented filmmakers. It has happened so recently that I wonder if we can credit some sort of technological revolution, that the effects that Welles or Scorsese had to work for can now effortlessly be duplicated. I can pinpoint almost exactly when the contemporary cinema happened: 1998 or 1999, the years of Armageddon, Rush Hour, The Mummy and The Phantom Menace. Before that there was certainly some sort of workmanship and traditionalism at work. (Jan De Bont and especially Roland Emmerich, not necessarily great filmmakers in themselves, worked in the mid-nineties and are representative of these old values. Their films seem almost anachronistic now.) It's not all bad, of course. The sitcom is finally going the way of the dinosaur, to be replaced with programs that are shot and edited outside of the soundstage like films. For every Brett Ratner there is a P.T. Anderson or the new Tarantino or the third version of Lars Von Trier (Dancer in the Dark and Dogville). It's difficult not to be wowed by Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. And though controversial, I'll defend Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, Marcus Nispel's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Michael Bay half the time (his R-rated films are characteristic of what is right with contemporary cinema, his PG-13 films are characteristic of what is wrong with contemporary cinema). They're greasy, evil, unapologetic movies that are hella bad for you.

In 1998, 1999, 2001, and 2002 really, I found myself overwhelmed with the great stuff I had been seeing. Our cinema now has a pulse. I think that the '00s will be to blockbuster action movies what the '50s were to the movie musical. In the future perhaps they will grow so big that the genre will implode onto itself. I think that Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is a product of our times. A whole lot of time, effort and care has been put into it. I'm happy to say that the director, Brad Silberling, is influenced much more heavily by Tim Burton and Jean-Pierre Jeunet than, say, executive producer Barry Sonnenfeld. I like Barry Sonnenfeld, and I actually think that his The Addams Family is better than most of Burton's work. But the Burton/Jeunet influences are richer. Funkier. Weirder.

You see Burton reflected directly in the ratty hair/pancake make-up/black lipstick goth look of Jennifer Coolidge and Jane Adams. You see Jeunet reflected in the villain with the hooks for hands, not to mention the indiscriminate time period, the fascination with mechanical contraptions, and the omnipotent narrator. In an interview with Salon, Wes Anderson says that he wasn't influenced by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (filmmakers wisely tend to be cautious about giving their immediate contemporaries too much credit), but he thinks that they are kindred spirits of sorts, that the films that DO influence him are probably the same ones that influence Jeunet. Similarly, Silberling digs deep into the films that influenced Jeunet and Burton. While there are overt references to the two filmmakers, there is a level where it operates as a parallel work. Lemony Snicket is not quite a cheap photocopy.

The film actually does reference Jeunet contemporary Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums. The three heroes live in a mansion of sorts and are all geniuses in their own little field: the girl is an inventor, the boy has read a lot of books, the baby is good at biting. And of course, again with the omnipotent narrator. A significant portion of the plot of Lemony Snicket is stolen from The Night of the Hunter, a film that Silberling has been upfront in crediting for inspiration. The City of Lost Children massaged the plot of Night of the Hunter into its storyline as well. (All three films involve orphans who are hunted down by their abusive adoptive parents as they have obtained some kind of treasure that the parents want.)

The chief influence on Burton seems to have been silent movies. He owes much of his career to German Expressionism, probably Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in particular (as a matter of fact, that Goth look that I credited to Burton should probably be credited to Caligari). His films are broad, sweeping and a little "off." Filmic though. The silent greats are evoked in Lemony Snicket in a makeshift iris shot, where a window "eye" is gradually opened up to enlighten the darkness. Everything about this window "eye" sends out those kind of vibes. A climactic scene where a similar window "eye" is used by the hero as a laser somehow reeks of Murnau: this idea of the sun rising and vanquishing all the darkness.

Roger Ebert describes how Edward Scissorhands is intended to be like one of the silent clowns and how the physical humor resembles the sort of situations that they would have found themselves in (i.e. the waterbed scene, definitely something that Chaplin may have done had there been waterbeds). Okay, so in Lemony Snicket the kids are adopted by Meryl Streep who lives in a house on a cliff over the sea. She is seduced by the evil Count Olaf who wants the kids' money, a deeper Night of the Hunter reference. Olaf has apparently forced her to write a suicide note and thrown her out her window (a window "eye"). A storm is coming through and is tearing apart the house. We're warming up to an homage to Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr., but it really sunk in for me when they leave the house just before it collapses entire. I can't remember the exact image, I should probably start keeping notes when I watch a film for review, but it explicitly evoked for me that famous shot in Steamboat Bill, Jr. where the face of the house falls on Buster Keaton, but he is saved as he is standing exactly where the window would be.

While not a source for Burton, but certainly a parallel source to Burton's, the film riffs on early twentieth century melodrama. Count Olaf parks his car on the railroad tracks, he gets out and locks the kids in as a train comes roaring by. Oldest fucking trick in the book. We can imagine the serial ending right there, and us having to tune in the next week to see how the kids get of this pickle. In the climax, Count Olaf is trying to marry his adoptive daughter on stage so he can murder her for the money. In case she refuses, he promises to drop the baby from a tower. The boy has to rescue the baby and stop the wedding before it happens. Sounds like classic melodrama to me.

Now, the glaring problem with all of this is that I'm praising Silberling for being a mimic. He doesn't transform or build upon these influences like someone like Wes Anderson on Burton would (to say nothing of Tarantino). Aside from a cameo by Dustin Hoffman, there seems to be little to indicate that this was made by the same guy who did Moonlight Mile. (It is well worth wondering why they just didn't get Tim Burton to do Lemony Snicket. It seems that he was working on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory instead. The trailer is attached to Lemony Snicket, and it is creepy as all hell. I can say without a trace of facetiousness that it reminded me of the Nispel Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake trailer. I can't wait to see it, but I mean, Jesus, if I was a kid I would be crying and screaming at the very sight of that thing. I mean, yeah, a Tim Burton remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory sounds like the way you should do it, but be very careful for what you wish for. I mean, Jesus Christ! A copy of a Tim Burton, for better or for worse, dilutes the poison enough so that Lemony Snicket is neither too overwhelming nor too terrifying.)

I also realize that much of the good stuff in Lemony Snicket probably should be credited to the original author and not as much to the filmmakers. It was, after all, Lemony Snicket the author who likely created these situations and lent the material the necessary tone. I've never known how to really review adaptations, or have an opinion towards them. As I don't believe that I have to read the novel to appreciate Legally Blonde, to say nothing of Psycho, Touch of Evil or Dr. Strangelove, I've tended for the most part to simply ignore the question of who to credit for a film adaptation's quality. I don't expect film adaptations to be faithful to their source material at all. It seems to be a profoundly childish thing to ask; the book itself isn't going to change because of the film. Blade Runner has close to nothing to do with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but that doesn't change the fact that both are masterpieces. As a matter of fact, not only do I think that film adaptations mustn't have complete fidelity to the source material, ideally they will provide some sort of reading or interpretation to the source material. I haven't read the Lemony Snicket books, but I somehow suspect that the film is a fairly faithful adaptation. As there doesn't seem to be any of Silberling in the film, there is the suggestion that it's all Snicket and the film is little more but an illustration of the novel. Such a creation places the movies at the kid's tables and encourages all those bullshit "high art/low art" distinctions between literature and the cinema.

Lemony Snicket probably could have been improved, perhaps propelled to the level of the enjoyable if impersonal (and slightly overrated) Spider-Man 2 or Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban if it had a little less music and a little less narration from the author Lemony Snicket. It's a rare, condescending decision and keeps us wired into the real world, actively keeping us from reaching that deep REM stage of filmgoing. I'm compelled to compare it to overseasoning a dish. You don't taste more of the dish, you just taste the seasoning. In particular, I'm thinking of the scene where the three children see the ruins of their former house. You almost want to mute the sound to prevent the power of the images from diluting. I think that it has a little too much Jim Carrey also.

Ten years ago, strangely enough, we could have easily taken the high road to Carrey and Sandler and just write them off as juvenile and stupid. I'm not sure that it's just as easy today. Between the two, I prefer Sandler. Or perhaps I just respect him more. It doesn't really have anything to do with the quality of his movies. I think that Carrey may actually have more watchable films to his credit, although none of Sandler's work have ever approached the sheer awfulness of Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. But Sandler has developed a persona, an interesting one. With Sandler's idol Jerry Lewis, the kid and the asshole were seperate entities (explicitly so in his The Nutty Professor). With Sandler they are all mixed together; it's all the same package. Sandler doesn't afford himself the luxury of good and evil. The continually reinforced Sandler persona makes all his films very insular. He's an auteur; typically his films don't belong to the director but to him exclusively. (With Punch-Drunk Love of course, what you have is synergy with writer/director P.T. Anderson. I haven't seen Spanglish yet, but we may be able to say the same thing about him and James L. Brooks. For better or for worse.)

Jim Carrey, on the other hand, has never developed any sort of identity. In fact his best film was unquestionably Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the one film where he is entirely invisible. When he does other "serious" projects he is presented as the ultimate ordinary man. While Carrey enthusiastically embraces low-brow humor, there is something in him that is eager to be accepted by everyone and this ensures that his comedy is superficial and generally impersonal, that it can basically be molded for somebody else's purposes. Carrey has said that his role in Eternal Sunshine is the closest to the real him when he isn't "on." Well, Christ, that means that we're not really seeing a good deal of Jim in his art, doesn't it? (What really comes out in this review, I've discovered while writing it, is that I assign the idea of auteurship itself a strongly weighted value.)

I don't necessarily think that Carrey is a bad thing, but he's seasoning and they've overseasoned it. He seems to have been encouraged to improvise, and this occasionally leads to rather problematic moments like when he impersonates a baby dinosaur. Jurassic Park, I thought. Then I thought, "anachronistic." It's a "junk" movie reference that doesn't fit into the Lemony Snicket atmosphere. The whole performance is like that: junk laughs swimming around in the gothic atmosphere. In The Grinch, for better or for worse, this shtick gelled. Not here; the material seems to cry out for something more subdued. I also felt taken out of the movie a tad during Carrey's introduction. His eyes appear to be tearing a little as he is trying very hard not to laugh at himself.

Ah, but you know, "trying very hard not to laugh at himself," that's really a double-edged sword. George C. Scott had three criteria for judging acting. The third one was the "joy of the performance"; the actor has to enjoy what they are doing. Although Scott would probably ultimately look down on hiding back laughter in a performance as his first criterion was that the performance had to be the character, Carrey unquestionably has the charge of a joyful performance. Scott's second criterion is whether or not you can come up with fresh choices to present common emotions. What strikes me about Scott's three criteria, especially this second one, is how ultimately unpretentious they are. He only seems to be concerned with what the audience sees. One of the curious things in Lemony Snicket is seeing Carrey outact Meryl Streep. All the adults in the picture are presented on the level of caricature, but of course caricature comes more easily to Carrey (who is without an identity) and not so naturally to Streep. Two-dimensionality is a challenge for many actors, because you can't really think about the character in human terms. You can't put yourself into their skin. You have to think in terms of what effects will be produced in the viewer if you move your body like that or put that kind of inflection on that particular line. You are not allowed to be natural. We saw a glimpse of two-dimensional acting from Streep at the end of the otherwise nice but worthless Stuck on You where she is playing a character in a play within the film. The potency of it was startling. She doesn't seem to do that here; her performance is not particularly incredible. It may be a problem with the character, Count Olaf is just easier to show off in.

One of the things that did impress me very much about Carrey's performance is how he is entirely comfortable with making the Count Olaf character entirely unsympathetic. A seducer, suggested pedophile, adult murderer, potential child murderer and altogether greedy bastard: Carrey understands that demonization is a form of deification and thus makes Count Olaf not scary but just profoundly unlikable. He plays the part as if he hopes that little kids will kick him in the nuts if they see him in the street. They would know, in other words, that they can triumph over Count Olaf and the Count Olafs of the world. There are two particularly jolting moments involving Count Olaf in the film. The first is when he suddenly and fairly casually slaps the boy across the face knocking him down. We're taken to further depths of darkness here; Count Olaf is now no longer a colorful monster, he is a real monster. But it never feels out of character for Count Olaf; it's not tonally dissonant as much as simply a revelation of what universe we have been in all along. And then there is the marriage between the girl (age 14) and Count Olaf. If she refuses he promises to kill her infant sister. We understand that he wants to marry her so he can kill her and get her inheritance, and the whole idea is again self-consciously melodramatic in the literal sense of the word. But Silberling and Carrey don't emphasize the greed and de-emphasize the sexual attention Count Olaf has toward his adoptive daughter anymore than they need to. Silberling even has her face caked in make-up and blush: traces of Brooke Shields' Pretty Baby being offered up on a plate? Again, Carey has a comfort with being portrayed like this; he doesn't seem to be that concerned if we like the character or not. In fact, he is eager to get you to hate him. He keeps the creepy charge of the January-December marriage well intact.

That I have spent much of this review talking about other movies, and I still feel like I have mined Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events for everything that it's worth: that seems to be a good indicator of the ultimate worth of the piece. All and all, Lemony Snicket is a profoundly rich, but rather shallow entertainment. It probably deserves to be near the top of the weekly box-office winners, but it's not a keeper. A bright spot in the movie year, but not one of its greatest products. I can't say that I wasn't cheered by seeing the movie, but I guess that I still expect more.