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Hopefully, those May flowers will start blooming soon after the many April (and previous months’) showers. But whatever the weather, Netflix has a solid selection of new movies to watch this month.

Netflix’s May lineup has several bright and joyful animated films as well as more serious stories with light at the end of the tunnel. Tom Hanks’ latest theatrical release “A Man Called Otto” arrives on the streaming service, adapted from Frederick Backman’s book “A Man Called Ove” and following the story of a grumpy old man who struggles to find purpose in life after the death of his wife.

Animated adventures for the whole family include “The Croods” and “The Tale of Desperaux” which teach lessons of bravery in their own ways. For those in the mood for slightly quirkier stories, Jason Moore’s “Pitch Perfect” and “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events” should do the trick.

It's that time of the month when you're about to find out which movies and television shows you've had stockpiled in your watchlist are about to expire. No worries. It happens to the best of us. We live in an era where there's way too much to watch that some will inevitably slip through the cracks. But if you were hoping to catch a few of them before they're gone or off to a different streaming service, then it's not too late!

Everything I have listed here won't be leaving Netflix until the start of November, with some leaving right as the post-Halloween period begins. An interesting thing to note is the disappearance of some Netflix Originals such as the series "The Yard," which seems to be an ongoing trend, as /Film's Erin Brady has reported.

The one, however, that caught my eye was "If Anything Happens I Love You,...

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events demonstrates what happens when you take a clever idea and run it into the ground. One's delight with the first act gives way to seat shifting in the second and gazing at one's watch in the third. What should have been an utterly beguiling exploration of the dark side of fantasy and the universal appeal of gothic wickedness devolves into a repetitive comedy that squanders a hugely talented cast. Nevertheless, given the popularity of the book series by Lemony Snicket, the pen name of Daniel Handler, and the clowning of Jim Carrey as the story's flamboyant villain, the movie appears headed for the boxoffice stratosphere.

The droll idea behind the books is that all those "extremely unpleasant" events that occur in fairy tales are the very things that attract young readers in the first place. Kids -- and the kid in all of us -- love sinister villains and cruel fate. So in the stories and now in this movie, Snicket -- a gravely funny voice-over by Jude Law -- constantly warns against impending calamities about to befall his young heroes, even to the point of suggesting that the viewer flee to a next-door cinema where a much happier film is playing.

Those who stick it out encounter the unfortunate adventures of three plucky orphans (played by Emily Browning, Liam Aiken and the infant duo of Kara and Shelby Hoffman), who must cope with the tragic deaths of their parents and then a collection of eccentric relations who take stabs at being their guardians. The worst of the bunch is wily Count Olaf (Carrey), who plots to bilk the children out of their inheritance.

The film is jammed with amusing gags, one of the best has the youngest orphan, the toddler, speak in cackles, giggles and grunts that the other two understand perfectly well. The rest of us make do with subtitles.

Their unfortunate journey begins at the count's gloomy-looking mansion, continues to the greenhouse-like home of Uncle Monty (Billy Connolly), then to the cliffside home of Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep) and culminates in a circus performance where the count and his troupe of ne'er-do-well thespians conspire to get the count married to the 14-year-old girl to steal the money.

Unfortunate, too, is the inability of director Brad Silberling and writer Robert Gordon to turn a literary conceit into a cinematic adventure. Events are merely strung together rather than allowed to build to a climax. And the events themselves possess a discouraging sameness: Count Olaf plots to eliminate the orphans. No adult heeds the orphans' pleas. The trio escape his clutches through their own devises.

A viewer never develops much confidence in the film's dark side. The villainy of Count Olaf and his crew is cartoon villainy, lacking real menace. This throws off the balance between comedy and tragedy and denies Lemony Snicket of the very thing it wishes to wallow in -- the horrors in kiddie literature.

Carrey is again the master at physical comedy, contorting his body at gravity-defying angles and slipping chameleon-like from disguise to disguise. Yet there is something a bit hammy to his approach, a kind of wink to the audience that the wickedness is all play-acting.

Streep is quite funny as the unstable aunt, irrationally afraid of everything including objects and furniture in her own home. Connolly steals all his scenes as a herpetologist who wears a python around his neck while other reptiles wander his house. This is such a larger-than-life character that one rues his demise.

Working with production and costume designers Rick Heinrichs and Colleen Atwood, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki gives Lemony Snicket a stylized look that bleeds all primary colors from the scenes in favor of blacks, grays and browns. The sets are most wonderful with all their Dickensian melancholy exaggerated to reflect a child's point of view. If only the movie had adopted that tone.

LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

Paramount Pictures

Paramount and DreamWorks Pictures present a Parkes/MacDonald-Nickelodeon Movies production

Credits:

Director: Brad Silberling

Screenwriter: Robert Gordon

Based on the books by: Daniel Handler

Producer: Laurie MacDonald, Walter F. Parkes

Executive producers: Scott Rudin, Julia Pistor, Barry Sonnenfeld, Jim Van Wyck

Director of photography: Emmanuel Lubezki

Production designer: Rick Heinrichs

Music: Thomas Newman

Costume designers: Colleen Atwood, Donna O'Neal

Editor: Dylan Tichenor

Cast:

Count Olaf: Jim Carrey

Aunt Josephine: Meryl Streep

Voice of Lemony Snicket: Jude Law

Violet Baudelaire: Emily Browning

Klaus Baudelaire: Liam Aiken

Sunny: Kara Hoffman, Shelby Hoffman

Mr. Poe: Timothy Spall

Uncle Monty: Billy Connolly

Detective: Cedric the Entertainer

Bald Man: Luis Guzman

White Faced Woman: Jennifer Coolidge

MPAA rating PG

Running time -- 107 minutes...