TELEVISION REVIEW: "The Bad Beginning" is Anything But in Netflix's "A Series of Unfortunate Events" [PREVIEW]
This review contains potential spoilers for those who have not read the books.
The original A Series of Unfortunate Events movie, which combined the first three books—The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window—was utterly disappointing for fans of the books (myself included). These books were a central part of my childhood in a big way: while Harry Potter was universally beloved, the Lemony Snicket books were for the weirder kids who didn’t mind dark humor and tragic endings. Yet despite so much rich material, the feature film, starring Jim Carrey, failed to do the books justice, especially in our current age of turning one book into two (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Parts One and Two, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Parts One and Two, and Divergent) or even three (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies) films, seems impossibly dated. Why would you turn three books into one movie when you could milk the series endlessly for infinite movies (and prequels and spinoffs, et cetera)...
You can find the rest of this review on PopMatters here.
The original A Series of Unfortunate Events movie, which combined the first three books—The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window—was utterly disappointing for fans of the books (myself included). These books were a central part of my childhood in a big way: while Harry Potter was universally beloved, the Lemony Snicket books were for the weirder kids who didn’t mind dark humor and tragic endings. Yet despite so much rich material, the feature film, starring Jim Carrey, failed to do the books justice, especially in our current age of turning one book into two (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Parts One and Two, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Parts One and Two, and Divergent) or even three (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies) films, seems impossibly dated. Why would you turn three books into one movie when you could milk the series endlessly for infinite movies (and prequels and spinoffs, et cetera)...
(http://www.popmatters.com/review/a-series-of-unfortunate-events/)
You can find the rest of this review on PopMatters here.
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