In effect a cartoonised synopsis of what's gone before, this sequence (which may remind older viewers of the outstanding opening titles from Daniel Haller's otherwise-forgettable The Dunwich Horror [1969]) is of an order of artistic achievement several notches above anything in the uneven feature film which it follows. But while the names of director B.Silberling, screenwriter Robert Gordon and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki are prominently displayed within it, those of the individuals responsible for the sequence itself are teasingly withheld, apart from one brief and unclear reference to a company named Axiom.

A search of the internet provides little further enlightenment, apart from a commentator (one of many singling out the animation for special mention) who reckons it's the handiwork of the team who provided the similarly best-in-show animated synopsis at the beginning of S.Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can. "Credit where credit's due" has long been a sacred motto in moviemaking - it surely can't be right that finding out who deserves the praise for such a terrific achievement should be such a complicated endeavour. *

But what of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events as a whole? Despite numerous flashes of wit, charm and ingenuity, the film is a rather so-so affair, providing a faux Tim Burton experience in laborious olde-worlde whimsy (which isn't saying much, when even the actual features of T.Burton himself so often fail to fully satisfy). With Burton collaborators Lubezki and (production designer) Rick Heinrichs on board, the similarities are clearly intentional. This is somewhat appropriate for the cinematic adaptation of books - by Daniel Handler AKA L.Snicket - which wear their own literary influences so proudly and blatantly on their sleeve.

"If Nietzche wrote Pollyanna" is how one uber-fan sums up their lugubrious appeal. Seemingly devised as an American variant of the wildly successful Harry Potter novels, the L.Snicket books first appeared in 1999 and the volume-count is already into double-figures: alliteration-loving Handler thankfully does not share J.K.Rowling's proclivity for punishingly protracted pagination. As with H.Potter, the L.Snicket series foregrounds a trio of freakishly talented children: young-teen siblings Violet (played by Emily Browning in the film) and Klaus Baudelaire (Liam Aiken), and their precocious infant sister Sunny (Kara and Shelby Hoffman). Their idyllic moneyed-bohemian childhood in Boston comes to a sudden end when their family mansion burns down, resulting in the death of both parents. Thus orphaned, the hapless trio are shunted around the houses of various aunts and uncles under the officious guidance of lawyer Mr Poe (Timothy Spall), all the while attempting to avoid the clutches of their wicked distant relative Count Olaf (Jim Carrey channelling Christopher Lloyd) who aims to bump them off and thus obtain the famed Baudelaire fortune. Complications ensue in a narrative which (reportedly, quite nimbly) combines elements of the first three novels: The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room and The Wide Window.

If the animated credit-sequence is the best thing about the film (and it most emphatically is so, even showcasing oft-self-plagiarising composer Thomas Newman at his most restrained, distinctive effective) the second best is young Aussie E.Browning, spot on as the mournful-featured junior inventor Violet. Even her name sounds exactly right for the retro-gothic universe which L.Snicket, B.Silberling and company aim to create, and she holds her own in impressive style amid a sea of potential scene-stealers, from the toddling Hoffman twins (Sunny's baby-talk is amusingly translated via subtitles) to the scenery-chewing J.Carrey whose vaudevillian (vaudevillain?) 'turn' as the dastardly Olaf, while often great fun, is so OTT as to almost unbalance the whole production. Carrey's Olaf isn't quite 2004's most verbosely hammy, self-satisfied baddie - but he gives T.Hanks from The Ladykillers a fair old run for his money, and sets a marker for J.Depp to aim at in the first half of T.Burton's upcoming Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Young Aiken is consistently overshadowed by his more vividly-drawn screen relatives, and with his R.Grintish dark-ginger locks and expression of bemusement may stir too many memories of the Potter adaptations (Snicket is thankfully too archly post-modern to take itself anything like as seriously as the dot-every-T Potter pictures). Meryl Streep and Billy Connolly have fun in their undemanding roles as friendly Baudelaire kin (Connolly as 'Uncle Monty', no less) - but the peerless Luis Guzman is utterly wasted in a nothing part as 'Bald Man' while regular C.Guest collaborators Jennifer Coolidge and Catherine O'Hara aren't exactly over-taxed by their brief appearances. Few will shed tears, however, that unfunny Scot Craig Ferguson (last seen in the dire I'll Be There) is equally underused - he even manages to be upstaged by his own billing as 'Person of Indeterminate Gender': a late rival to The Forgotten's 'A Friendly Man' for the title of 2004's drollest credit.

20th December, 2004
[seen 19th December : Odeon Gate, Newcastle : public show]


* Since writing this review I have been contacted by the person responsible for the sequence in question. Jamie Caliri is this person: www.jamiecaliri.com