Netflix’s Series of Unfortunate Events learns what the movie got wrong

The moment you start watching the new Netflix Displays A series of bad eventsNeil Patrick Harris is asking you to stop. “Look away, look away,” he said in his opening theme, “this show is going to ruin your evening, your whole life, and your day.” It’s the same approach A series of unfortunate events books for her always taken, both in their scripts and in their marketing: engaging fans by telling them about their lives would be more interesting if they looked for almost any other story instead. The trick works – the quickest way to get kids to read something is to tell them they shouldn’t. Fortunately for Netflix, the TV adaptation of A series of bad events Not as terrible as all the marketing, theme song, and narration claim.

Author Daniel Handler first launched the A series of unfortunate events Novels in 1999, written under the pseudonym “Lemon Snicket”, which he narrates on both his own series and a Netflix show. In 2004, Nickelodeon adapted the first few Snicket books into a theatrical film, starring Jim Carrey, which was intended to launch a film franchise. But the movie failed to take off at the box office, and planned sequels were cancelled. The books are now getting a Hollywood reboot on Netflix, with a first season appropriately releasing on Friday, January 13th.

The plot of the show closely follows the books. (For fans, the eight-episode season covers the events of the first four novels in the 13-book series: The bad start, the reptile room, the wide window, the miserable mill.) Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire are orphans whose parents died in a mysterious fire. The show documents the (unfortunate) events in their lives as they are passed on from guardian to guardian. Snicket tells the story of the evil Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris), who pursues children in an attempt to seize their inherited fortune. Along the way, a more substantial conspiracy involving the mysterious VFD organization emerges as a major factor in the Baudelaires’ life.

But the show doesn’t just follow the books’ story beats; It brings out the tone that made the stories so special. Most children’s books tend to treat children like children. but A series of bad events He took its audience seriously, refusing to neglect its content.

The individual novels rarely end on euphoric notes, and Snicket’s narration quickly reminds readers that Baudelaire’s story is not a happy one. The characters are complex and morally gray, and as the series progresses, both heroes and villains are forced to make choices that blur the lines between them. The world-building is rich with mystical groups lurking in the background, and a deep, interconnected backstory that spans the entire series for attentive readers to uncover alongside the Baudelaire orphans. While the current Netflix episodes only cover a relatively short portion of the overall series, it’s clear that they have been produced with great care to ensure Feel From books jumped to the screen.

Comparisons between the Netflix series and the 2004 movie adaptation are inevitable, especially given how the two projects have evolved. Originally slated to direct the 2004 film, Barry Sonnenfeld — a fan of the books — hired Handler to write the screenplay. After financial setbacks, Sonnenfeld left the project, and new director Brad Silberling discarded most of Handler’s script. The Netflix series returns Handler as writer, Sonnenfeld as director, and both as executive producers.

Sonnenfeld is perhaps best known for his directing men in black And Adams family films, two franchises that speak to his own sense of humor that is broad, unmixed and often physical. This thread follows in the new series. Sonnefeld also served as an executive producer on Pushing daisies He directed the first two episodes of the short-lived series. This show seems like the strongest influence on A series of bad events: Both series draw on colorful, dark humor, along with mile-a-minute dialogue full of wordplay and quirky humor. Sonnenfeld’s love of CGI – successful or not – is on display, too. The CGI-enhanced physical sets of places like Lucky Smells Lumber Mill or Uncle Monty’s Reptile Room work well, with the computer-added extras helping to turn realistic earthly settings into gorgeous, memorable locations. On the other hand, some of the purely digital effects are less convincing, with things looking cartoonish. (Fans of the books: the incredibly deadly Viper, the destruction of Aunt Josephine’s house, and most of baby Sunny’s most action-packed scenes are especially cruel.)

Handler’s involvement is evident in the scripts. Where the film adaptation differs greatly from the books, the Netflix series follows the text almost verbatim, which is a double-edged sword. The heavy use of narration is an iconic aspect of the novels, and for longtime fans, it’s great to see it on screen. But it also serves as a crutch, allowing the script to lean toward rambling exposition pranks that tell the story rather than show it. The show also makes the wise move of having Lemony Snicket – a fictional book author and unreliable narrator – appear on the show instead of providing an unseen voiceover. Patrick Warburton’s realistic, realistic delivery helps add to the storybook quality and, more importantly, puts Handler’s memorable monologues on linguistic definitions, literary references, and storytelling techniques on screen. The book’s supernatural nature has always been one of its most compelling elements, and the show’s embrace of Snicket as a full-fledged character gives it the same distinct tone that made the novels so popular.

The dedication to Handler’s source material is definitely fun for fans of the series, but it can be a bit much for new viewers. The best cultural parallel is to adapt another children’s book, Harry Potter films. While the Christopher Columbus series launch films are more faithful to Rowling’s books, the obsessive devotion to the source material yields weaker films from a cinematic perspective then, say, Alfonso Cuarón’s take on the third novel, giving the young actors more freedom. to express their personalities, and act like children rather than the more rigid and pretentious actors who hit their marks. If Netflix decides to renew A series of bad events For a second season, it could benefit from following the novels less closely and giving its characters — especially Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, who are there largely to be chased by Olaf and solve problems with their three skills — more time to develop as standalone. Entities from their book counterparts.

The Netflix series benefits from the TV format, with its much more generous length: While the feature film crams Handler’s first three novels into a single 105-minute block, the TV series gives nearly every novel that much time to screen, which allows for full adaptations and even new scenes to fill in. The backstory of events that goes beyond the novels. The show understands its audience well, with plenty of subtle and clear references to the books, from Hidden Mickey– VFD symbols scattered freely across the rings for a fleeting reference to a long-lost sugar bowl.

There is one major exception, however, when it comes to the show parodying the books – Neil Patrick Harris’ Count Olaf is given plenty of freedom to improvise in bringing the character to life, to mixed results. Early on, the character doesn’t feel like a threatening villain – it’s pretty obvious that Neil Patrick Harris is wearing the scary make-up of an old man. His delivery and mannerisms are almost unchanged from the one he said, Barney Stinson. Harris so far tends to the same fake rage his early clips felt how i met your mother Full excerpts with a slightly out of place musical number in the second episode. However, by the third episode, as Olaf’s schemes get more and more ridiculous, Harris’ inspirational performance works in his favour. The surreal nature of the character’s absurd masks – which only the Baudelaire children (and thus the audience) seem to be able to penetrate – and Olaf’s determined campaign to own their fortune give Harris an outlet for his own humor. The comic touch makes the moments when he takes off the mask and reveals Olaf’s cold and dark heart all the more effective.

After Harris and Warburton, the actual Baudelaires become less important to the story as a whole. They basically walk on plot devices. Violet (Malina Weissman, an apparent clone of Emily Browning, who played Violet) – and Klaus (Louis Hynes) are the only real character of the trio, since Sunny is a little kid. But both kids do their job well, portraying a sense of pluck and an upbeat tenacity that makes them easy to root for.

At the beginning of each episode, Snicket keeps popping up to reiterate the idea to viewers that they’d be better off watching something else, even as the show tries to woo them with its adorable Warburton velvet rendition, and its references to more mysteries. Viewers will have to decide for themselves whether to take this advice.

all episodes A series of bad events It will be available on Netflix on January 13th.