My Year with Meryl Streep: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
By: Brian Rowe
Tags: Film, Meryl Streep, Movies, Children, Fantasy

I recently spent a whole year watching a Meryl Streep film every week, and I thought I’d share with you some of the reviews I wrote for her many classic films!

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)

When Meryl received the 2004 AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, a who’s-who of acclaimed Academy Award-winning dramatic actors took to the stage to honor her, including Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, and Clint Eastwood. The actor who kicked off the show, however, was more known for comedy than for drama, and to many, he might have seemed an unlikely choice to even be in the building, let alone begin the ceremony.

That night Jim Carrey gave one of the funniest and most heartfelt opening speeches ever at an AFI Lifetime Achievement event, but he wasn’t just there to provide laughs. Carrey had recently wrapped his newest movie, one that teamed him for the first time with Meryl herself. Yes, one of the most unlikeliest cinematic pairings ever can be seen in Brad Silberling’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.

That is not to say that Carrey isn’t worthy of starring alongside Meryl in a movie. Known for talking out of his ass in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective for much of the 1990s, he came into his own as a dramatic actor later in the decade in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon. Like Robin Williams before him, Carrey became one of those rare actors who could bounce back and forth between broad comedies and complex dramas with ease.

The same year that A Series of Unfortunate Events was released, Carrey gave what many consider his best dramatic performance in Michel Gondry’s fantastic, similarly long-titled Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He was at the peak of his career when he chose to play the cartoonish and most certainly villainous Count Olaf, an opportunity that allowed him to play two scenes with Meryl, in one of her goofiest performances to date.

A Series of Unfortunate Events is based on the first three books of Lemony Snicket’s beloved children’s series. The Nickelodeon-produced film, directed by Silberling (Casper) and written by Robert Gordon (Galaxy Quest), tells of three young siblings — Violet (Emily Browning), Klaus (Liam Aiken), and baby Sunny (Kara and Shelby Hoffman) — who become orphans when a fire kills their parents, and then are sent to live with the mysterious Count Olaf, an eccentric distant relative only interested in inheriting the kids’ money.

When Olaf unsuccessfully tries to have them murdered, the kids momentarily go to stay with their odd uncle (Billy Connolly), then their agoraphobic aunt (Meryl). But Olaf arrives and steals the kids back, leaving their quirky Aunt Josephine to be eaten by leeches (this is one of the few movies that Meryl perishes in, albeit off-screen). In the end, Olaf tries to marry young Violet to get the kids’ money for good.

Parents were reportedly mortified by this film upon its release, given the dark elements of the story and the vindictive nature of Count Olaf. This is a bad, bad man who makes Carrey’s previous larger-than-life villains The Riddler and The Grinch look like Mother Theresa. The film performed okay but not great at the box office, making a little over 200 million dollars worldwide off a 140 million dollar budget, but it’s not the Tim Burton-like approach that keeps the movie from ever soaring. Carrey does what he can with his juicy role, and the art direction and make-up (the latter of which won an Academy Award) are outstanding.

The main problem with A Series of Unfortunate Events is that it never fully engages the viewer with a worthwhile story. So much of it comes off flat, with set piece after set piece that slows down the narrative rather than speeds it up. Also, unlike the Harry Potter series, which this film was obviously trying to emulate in some respects, the two main kids come off rather dull.

Meryl has fun with her small part of Aunt Josephine. She’s in so little of the movie that her role barely registers as a glorified cameo — she has only a few more minutes of screen-time in this than she had in the previous year’s Stuck on You, in which she played herself — but her participation in A Series of Unfortunate Events is interesting for a few reasons.

One, she gets a couple of scenes with Carrey, an actor that few would have expected her to ever share screen-time with. Two, it remains the only live-action children’s film she’s ever appeared in; besides voicing characters in The Ant Bully and Fantastic Mr. Fox, and providing narration for other short animated works, she has stuck to adult fare.

Three, she has rarely played a character as loony and off-the-wall than the one here. Aunt Josephine looks ridiculous, with her huge ruffled shoulders, tiny glasses, and poofy blonde hair. She is also incredibly stupid, a quality Meryl almost never plays. Whether she’s screaming at the local realtor (an uncredited Jane Lynch) or being seduced by a disguised Count Olaf, Aunt Josephine is a wild, unusual character that many would have pegged someone like Joan Cusack or Helena Bonham Carter to play. But Meryl has a blast, clearly relishing the opportunity to break out of her comfort zone.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events will not be remembered as one of Meryl’s most memorable movies. All the elements are there, particularly an inspired performance by Carrey, but the film never comes to life the way the viewer hopes. Most disappointing of all, Meryl is in so little of the movie that if you blink, you’ll miss her.

Although she didn’t need to be the star, it would have been nice for the screenwriter to incorporate her character a little more into the narrative. Meryl proved in 2004 that she could play supporting characters in two very different kinds of movies and still, with far less screen-time than the movie-star protagonist, steal the show. While her chilling performance in The Manchurian Candidate is more impressive, Meryl’s comical role in A Series of Unfortunate Events is a wonderfully goofy lark the actress rarely takes.

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Brian Rowe is an author, teacher, book devotee, and film fanatic. He received his MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from the University of Nevada, Reno, and his BA in Film Production from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He writes young adult and middle grade suspense novels, and is represented by Kortney Price of the Corvisiero Agency. You can read more of his work at his website, brianrowebooks.com.