The World is Quiet Here: A retrospective on the Snicketverse

Looking back on my childhood, yeah. I read Harry Potter. I watched the movies. Everybody did. But when I look back and take stock of what children’s  literature really drove my imagination and molded my own personality and creative sensibilities, it certainly wasn’t JK Rowling. I remember the works of Roald Dahl. I remember Eoin Colfer’s young thief, Artemis Fowl, and his plans to pull an epic heist on subterranean fairies (the movie allegedly made from that book doesn’t exist). But most emphatically…I remember the quirky, dour world of Lemont Snicket and the woeful tale of the Baudelaire orphans. I remember the wicked but incompetent Count Olaf (perhaps one of the most deliciously vile villains in all of children’s literature).

A Series of Unfortunate Events taught an entire generation some sobering, uncomfortable truths about the world: sometimes things go bad and there’s nothing to change that. Sometimes, the systems we’re told are in place to protect us don’t work. Adults pretend that they know what they’re doing, but most are just as clueless as their children…dangerously so. The Baudelaires learn these truths on their journey to escape the clutches of Count Olaf after the death of their parents in a terrible fire. 

Now, while the movie didn’t make a huge splash when it came out, I’ve come to realize that I have a great deal of Nostalgia for it. The cast is amazing. Jim Carey is iconic, hilarious and sinister as Count Olaf. The trio of child actors are fantastic. Jude Law as Lemony Snicket is a revelation. The set design and cinematography are gorgeous. The music is great (especially that track during the iconic end credits animation). That opening scene with the stop motion movie about a creepy, elf? Amazing. The gloomy, bizarre and clever themes and aesthetics of Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler’s work are all adapted beautifully. Billy Connolly as Uncle Monty is so wholesome and loving, and the tragedy of his demise is done beautifully.

It is my firm belief that this movie should have been a way bigger success, and much more beloved staple of pop culture. It needed sequels, damn it! There are 13 books in this series. We needed to see the fate of The Baudelaires 😤.

As for my thoughts on the show? It’s fine. I usually love Barry Sonnenfeld and he does good work there…but the show does point out a rather glaring flaw in the books as you see them adapted so slavishly as episodes: they can get repetitive if you read/watch them too close together. So binge watching the show has been difficult for me and I have yet to finish. Also, while the cast if good…the terminally deadpan delivery by nearly everyone in the cast gets a little tiresome. The child actors playing the Baudelaires are good. Neil Patrick Harris does a pretty good job as Count Olaf, especially at selling the characters incompetence…but he’s not Jim Carey., and that’s ok! Nobody needs to be JimCarey except Jim Carey. NPH did his own thing and it was fine. If there is one bit of casting in the show that I think is actually pretty amazing and may top the movie…it was Patrick Warburton as the narrator and put-upon VFD spy Lemony Snicket. He is fantastic in this. The theme song with NPH singing is absolute fire though, I’ll give the show that. Look away loooook awaaaayyyy.

I think, in a few years how that the show has ended, an animated series of films would be great. Hand-drawn, 2D animated would be best, I think. But with the write direction, 3D may work as well. Stop-Motion might work the best though, I think. Get Henry Sellick on that shit. Any way to put the Baudelaires and Count Olaf back in theaters where they belong, but in a medium more comfortably tailored for capturing the gloomy, baroque weirdness of the Snicketverse. Hell, there are apparently prequel books about a young Lemony Snicket. Make movies out those! The world is ready to move on from JK Rowling and her wizards. Let’s make the world of Lemony Snicket the phenomenon it was meant to be! Now, excuse me while I get that creepy eye tattoos on my ankle.