Salt Lake Tribune Review

In the "Series of Unfortunate Events" book series, author Lemony Snicket cautions that anyone wanting a cheerful tale should put the book down before the story begins.
In the movie adaptation, the author (voiced by Jude Law) opens with, "This is an excellent opportunity to walk out of the theater, living room or airplane where this film is being shown."
And the warning, though a little over the top, is only partly a joke. As in the books, the first thing that happens to the Baudelaire children - 14-year-old Violet (Emily Browning), 12-year-old Klaus (Liam Aiken) and toddler Sunny (Kara and Shelby Hoffman) - is the fiery death of their parents.
The kids are taken to the man somehow deemed to be their closest relative (this is not quite explained), the steely-eyed Count Olaf (Jim Carrey). They soon realize Olaf is only after their parents' fortune, which he can only get through them.
Escaping his murderous clutches, they meet kindly "relatives" Monty, the snake expert (Billy Connolly), and Josephine (Meryl Streep), who also become targets for Olaf. The kids, of course, are smarter than any adult they meet; they are heroes because they read and use their imaginations to escape their perilous predicaments.
Unlike the Harry Potter movies, this one (directed by Brad Silberling, "Moonlight Mile" and "City of Angels") abandons slavish faithfulness to the author's plot, skimming the most exciting events from the first three books and mixing them around a bit. The freewheeling adventure story will feel familiar if not predictable for the series' many fans, some of whom might be disappointed at omissions and reshuffling of Snicket's unfortunate events.
The narrative, related partly through melancholy voiceover, retains the books' clever semi-Victorian language, which will probably delight adults even more than kids.
Delectable sets, costumes and decorations usually manage to convey a sense of timelessness, helping to link the chapters and lending a definite feel of fantasy even as the action takes place in something approximating our world. That feeling is marred by the intrusion of a few useless jokes pulled into the movie from our mundane modern reality: How much did AFLAC pay to put the stupid duck in there? The kids' performances are remarkably good, and Carrey thankfully doesn't overwhelm with an overly outrageous Olaf.
With its dark themes, the movie, like the books, is not intended for young children, at least not without some parental guidance. Older children will probably pick up on the tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, but the body count might be uncomfortably high for them, too (at least in the books, the deaths are spaced out so that only one or two happen each volume). As Lemony Snicket himself might say: Consider yourself warned.

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