A Series of Unfortunate Events

I was kind of excited for this movie. I saw that they were making it and thought, hey I always wanted to read those books, but now I don't have to. Excellent.
My review of this movie might be tainted. I went to the ten o'clock showing last night and there were only six people in the theater. I was also loopy on cold medication.
Alls I can really say is that this was one of those woulda, coulda, shoulda, films...like Willow...or not. The style and art direction in the film were superb, the visuals alone are worth seeing it, but they seemed to have stopped there. It's like they just built this elaborate set intending to make a "Series of Unfortunate Events" themepark but then decided that this would be great for a movie! Alright, let's bring in Jim Carrey, Catherine O'Hara and some squinty eyed Euro trash kids, OH YEAH, and Dustin Hoffman for a cameo. Better yet, so we're not labeled as racist, let's put Cedric (the "entertainer") in the movie too! WE CAN'T LOSE!!
And you know what? They did. The major mistake this movie made was how they handled the plot. It doesn't really have one. But that's ok, neither did Beetlejuice, but the reason Beetlejuice works, which is comparable stylistically, is because it doesn't take itself seriously. The movie recognizes it's own craziness and the comedy plays off of that. In SOUEvents, there are three characters who got that right, Jim Carrey, Catherine O'hara and Merril Streep. They all played fabulously eccentric characters much like many Tim Burton film characters.
Beetlejuice is so character driven, that's where it suceeds. Unfortunate Events fails because it's driven far too much by the children. It seemed like 80% of the time the camera was doing a closeup on the children and the 9% for Jim Carrey. There are a ton of interesting looking characters in the film, but hardly any of them speak.
But really, overall Jim Carrey is entertaining enough to partially make up for characters that lack. The biggest problem is with the lack of what George Lucas would call a "McGuffin", a plot device or object that is the center of conflict, the thing being searched after. In A New Hope it was the death star plans, in Empire it was Luke himself and in Jedi it was death star two and the redemption of vader that drove the plots. SOUEvents had really nothing. There was this ambiguous thing about a telescope that vaguely drove the story. The whole movie is this...and also what the script probably looks like.

GREAT VISUALS ---Jim Carrey funniness (Count Olaf tries to kill kids)---kids go to another foster home---more Jim Carrey zaniness (kill kids!)---another foster home----Kids foil Count Olaf's final attempt at killing them---Another Foster home----THE END.

But, go see it, the visuals are nice, Jim Carrey is muy bueno. I give it 7.78/10 McGuffins.