GiraffeDoor

Before we begin, note that I was one of those kids discovered that reading could be fun from these books.

OK, Captain Underpants did that really but this series were the first books to get me into reading when it wasn't about a guy in his underwear. Or was that Animorphs...

Either way this series was just part of my childhood in a very sentimental way.

I mention this because I want to be upfront that I'm that guy who is like "but in the books they did THIS!" I have a very particular idea of what this adaptation should look like so take what I have to say with a pinch of salt. It annoys me when people are too blinded by nostalgia to give a fair review.

When the movie came out in 2003 I thought: this is alright. Not the movie the series really deserved but it's...OK.

But the unfortunate (no pun intended) truth is that after watching this series for a while, my mind drifted longingly for that movie. That movie had this mysterious, gothic tone to it.

Is this a bad show? No. If I had never heard of the books I might have found it quite watchable. I found it watchable when I did watch it in fact.

One issue is that...well...it's TOO much like the books. What works well in prose often does not in audiovisual media. Lemony Snickets very distinct and meandering narration style in which he is a character as much as anyone else in there without even showing up, is such an integral part of the experience the books provide I suppose the adaptors were too nervous to cut it out.

A part of me loves that Joe Swanson is retelling me one of my favorite stories but seeing him Rodserlingized into the story gets old very quickly. If it were more sparce then it might work but it's like that recent adaptation of House of Usher in which you HAVE a good story but frustratingly, its gets diluted by this heavy handed framing device.

Now as for the story itself...overall it's as good as ever but if you haven't read the books, they have lost a lot of the charm they had. The books just had...an *atmosphere* a tone they have not been able to recreate.

I am annoyed at how mistakes have not been learned from. I mentioned how I consider the movie to be the superior adaptation of those first 3 books, but the big problem is "Carrey's pantomime villain". I suppose in practice the Baudelaire's are not great characters. That's the point really. They're nice kids and sympathetic heroes but they function as straight-folk among the eccentric types they encounter wherever they go. This, the producers thought they had to really ham up Count Olaf to provide the personality the orphans themselves do not bring. They're just too reasonable.

Patrick-Harris plays count Olaf as if Barney Stintson were cosplaying him.

This comes back to what I said about tone because this series is really trying hard to be a *comedy". They original books definitely had a sense of humor about themselves but it was not only a dark humor but one a lot more sardonic, dryer. There is a dignity in being low-key but when you're clearly trying for laughs, it gets a little painful before long.

Olaf WAS a formidable villain. Yes, the real villain was bureaucracy and illiteracy, that's the crux of the series. Seeing him as a buffoon, just about keeping out of prison because the extreme incompetence of everyone around him is a lot less satisfying. This is partly why that thing with Jacques was fairly important.

I have mixed feelings about this final big point: they seem to have fanfictionized a lot of this. By this I mean...well, in the books (sorry to say that yet again) you get the impression more and more that the kids' story is just part of a larger story. You get to see the intrigues of this wider story with a lot more candour which can be great fan service but at the same time it's not very mysterious.

The henchperson of indeterminate gender becomes something of a break-out character.

I want to acknowledge the difficulty in working with actors young enough to play Sunny; they do everything they need to and they even emote naturalistically even if I suppose it is through insert shots. The decision to subtitle her was annoying because 1) the movie already did that and 2) often it's just a single word that they're not translating, they just worry that the infant speaking isn't enunciating but she was fine.

Back to the fanfiction angle, certain characters that are really just plot-devices in the books and just a brief cameo get greatly expanded roles here. They're not exactly fleshed out, Kit and Jacques Snicket become Mary Sues.

Overall, this was an over-complicated and campy take on what was overall a restrained and poignant series of books. It's not that bad but as usual, I urge you to try the books no matter what you thought of this.

I want to avoid spoilers but I do want to mention that even the books basically fizzled out before the end and I do feel something of a catharsis in getting the ending the books more or less should have had.

I remain somewhat confused (who the hell was Cobie Smolders playing?) But this is not bad television.

I remember in about 2006 turning on the television and it happened to be Blue Peter that was on. I saw a female doll and the words "Agent Crush will be released September 2008".

I remember feeling low key interested in that this time round it was puppets but there was something about hearing the words "Agent Crush".

That is just such bad title. That was what stayed with me at that time. It is so unintriguing...

So years went by and something must have brought it back to mind and I'm there thinking "wait...did I dream that?"

So I caught this online. This viewing was very long awaited.

The trivia section insists that it was withheld from release for "unknown reasons".

It's easy to see the reason: it's just not that good.

Art is subjective and there are a lot of shoddy attempts at a "family movie" that become guilty pleasures or make money and maybe this might have turned a small profit but despite some positive things in there: this is kind of embarrassing.

OK, let's start with some positives.

It's all technically impressive. Puppetry is always hard and the engineering, artisanship and puppeteering skills needed for this were probably impressive. They realize a whole miniature world.

I am able to feel something for Crush: this robotic simulacrum of the idealized spy. Suave, debonaire, handsome in that large jaw line way... and then he discovers that he is just a machine...

This could have been a very poignant and at times dark rumination on the romanticization of espionage but it really stops short before it can really do anything with its own substance.

There's something...drab about this whole movie. It's a flurry of browns and grays and white. It's not the futuristic sheen of a laboratory or compound, this movie just conveys the vibe of an office building/warehouse.

The puppets themselves...like I said, I want to acknowledge the talent but they are not easy to look at. Some of them are supposed to look grotesque because they're villains. The puppets cannot facially emote and once in a while one becomes painfully aware that they are unable to just stand up and walk away.

All this could have been pretty quaint in a pedestrian kind of way but then there's the plot.

In a way that is hard to explain, this doesn't feel like a movie; it feels like a long episode of some forgotten children's show. The plot beats that might have made have made this feel like someone's transformative journey just aren't there; it's mostly this one rescue mission.

Too much running time is taken up by odious military types and villains. This movie thinks it's vaguely satirical by making our leaders seem like buffoons but it's just annoying.

I can empathize that one of the most villainous things a villain can do is be unapologetically flatulent but this movie is ultimately the lowest possible denominator.

I can't remember her name but that female puppet played by Neve...something... She really adds something. In terms of plot she's just one extra person for the older guy to talk to back at base but I like her. I like her moxy, she's there also to be the cheerleader character to have faith in the protagonist when he doesn't have any in himself.

I wish she could have been fleshed out more. I can believe she's been let down by real people and identifies more with machines and especially Crush since he is somebody's fantasy realized. I can infer this already from what little we saw so it's a pity.

I can feel in fits and starts a movie with heart but overall, this isn't a dopey movie that has an ineffable charm, it feels cobbled together in a desperate rush to meat a deadline by people who really didn't know what they were doing.

It is comforting to know that this movie was seen by few people and admired by much fewer.

Highly derivative and poorly thought through meditation on fear itself (don't you hate it when horror does that) as we see the world through the eyes of a child who has a lot more than just kid stuff to worry about.

Strangely admirable along a philosophic level as we see demonstrated the reality that mother simply does not always know best and that what we call children "running away" should be dubbed "escaping".

This was similar to "The Lodge" in that there is sort of an ambiguity of the real villain but they lean so hard into one possibility they repel toward predicting any twist or plot point that might have been satisfying.

Visually stunning with its atmospheric evocation of a sinister autumn, sadly the director thinks they're artsy and does some dumb stuff with giant shadows and unearned camera movements.

The approach to sound is predictably typical.

There's also a Matilda vibe with some substitute teacher who might as well have been the regular teacher thrown in there, presumably as some kind of audience surrogate even though it doesn't really apply here.

Also...Halloween is a big part of it. It opens with informing us "one week before halloween". Never mention the halloween exists in horror that is so basic...

The very title is based on stuff just shoved in there.

The ideal horror movie if you really want to see karma.