The Movie No One Wanted To See

A long time ago I listened to the audio book of Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events : The Reptile Room, mainly because the bleak, black sense of humor of the book really appealed to me and primarily because Tim Curry read the book. Here is a little example of Snicket's writing style from his biography:

Lemony Snicket was born before you were, and is likely to die before you as well. His family has roots in a part of the country which is now underwater, and his childhood was spent in the relative splendor of the Snicket Villa which has since become a factory, a fortress and a pharmacy and is now, alas, someone else's villa.

It was outstanding. So I was filled with joy when I saw the preview for the Lemony Snicket movie. Jim Carrey looked wonderful as the evil Count Olaf. All of the scenes looked fantastic, and I was happy to see that the Reptile Room plot was going to be included in the film.

No one wanted to see this but me, it seems. Which is fine, because I usually go to the theatre by myself anyway, this being no exception. I thought the film was great fun, and the cameos (Meryl Streep, Dustin Hoffman, Jennifer Coolidge as well as the ubiquitous Jude Law as the voice of Lemony himself) were great as well. Carrey was inspired as Olaf. I suppose that if you have read the books, the movie is better. Whatever. I liked it.

However, the end credits had the most magnificent animation I have seen in some time. In fact, they were so good, it made me wish that the filmmakers had spent as much time, money and consideration on the whole film as they did on the credits. It would have been so cool if the whole film looked like the credits...So skip the film and just sneak in and catch the last five minutes as the credits roll...it is a marvelous short film.