Written by: John Heffernan

“A Series of Unfortunate Events” was a thirteen book series that completely took over my childhood and those of many of my friends throughout middle school. The books would take a darker take than the traditional books usually targeted to middle schoolers. The books follow the  Baudelaire orphans after they are passed around from new guardian to guardian, each being worse than the last. The main antagonist of the book series is the “actor” Count Olaf who, in both of the following adaptations takes center stage. There has been two adaptations of the book series, the first being a 2004 Nickelodeon film, starring the likes of Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep and Jude Law. The second adaptation is a recent Netflix Original featuring Neil Patrick Harris and Patrick Warburton. So which of these adaptations takes the fortune as the superior version so far?

The first adaptation we are looking at today is the 2004 original A Series of Unfortunate Events (Siberling, 2004)(A Series of Unfortunate Events). One fun fact about this version is that it actually won an Academy Award for costume design, which is often a very underreported fact. The main character, Count Olaf, played by Jim Carrey steals the show from almost all of the other characters in the story. However, it is not really as accurate to the books and more like a character of Carrey’s creation. It comes with all of the Jim Carrey motifs, such as wacky voices, sounds, odd facial expressions and use of over the top disguises. The latter being synonymous with the character he was playing, but overall it is very hard to seperate the actor and the performance. The film chronicles the first three books of the series, following the guardians of Count Olaf, Dr. Montgomery Montgomery and Aunt Josephine. Montgomery played by Billy Connolly represents the quintessential fatherly figure and is so warm that it is almost uncomfortable how comfortable it is to hear him talk (which is a good thing). Surprisingly to me looking back at this film was the inclusion of Meryl Streep as Aunt Josephine, who plays it as a very eccentric woman who is afraid of literally everything. While pretty one dimensional, she still brings some interesting moments, such as her fear of realtors, to the main stage. Overall this adaptation is a really good film on it’s own. However, I would say that Carrey’s performance sort of takes over the scenes over the source material of the book series that I grew up with.

The second adaptation, A Series of Unfortunate Events (Sonnenfeld, 2017-) premiered on Netflix recently. The show, so far has two seasons under its belt, and has chronicled the first eight books in the series, a four per season schedule. The film features Neil Patrick Harris as the Count, and his performance is the same over the top performance that we saw in the 2004 version, except in this one, the distinct roles that have preceded the actor can be separated from Harris’ performance. He is extremely wacky and over the top, and one inclusion that shocked me was his singing talents. Many episodes feature songs that, while some of them seem to come from nowhere, though I believe there quality clears up their seemingly odd inclusion.

 

I feel that overall, streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime offer great opportunities for source materials such as novels and past shows to have no life. A film is only confined to two to three hours and are limited to the amount of content they can fit. When growing up I thought that the original 2004 version needed more sequels to tell the full story of the book series, but making a sequel (or even a feature film) can be difficult when compared to a television show. Additionally the “binge” method of watching makes the series on Netflix feel like 8 individual films rather than 16 individual episodes.

 

A Series of Unfortunate Events. Directed by Brad Silberling, Performances by Jim Carrey, Jude Law and Meryl Streep, Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks and Nickelodeon Movies, 2004.

Sonnenfeld, Barry, Welch, Bo, Palansky, Mark, Arkush, Allan, and Peristere, Loni, directors. A Series of Unfortunate Events. Sonnenfeld Company, The, What is the Question? and Paramount Television, 2017-.