Lemony Snicket's A series of unfortunate events - 2004

Nothing special; not bad but generally unsatisfying: because it creates questions that are not answered; because it doesn’t have a real ending, since we don’t know where the Beaudelaires will go next and what will be of them. I know, the message is that it doesn’t matter, wherever they’ll be, whatever will happen, they’ll be fine as long as they have each other. 

At first it wasn’t bad: I liked knowing Violet ( Emily Browning) the resourceful inventor, her brother Klaus (Liam Aiken)  the voracious reader, and Sunny (Kara & Shelby Hoffman), their little sister who loves to bite things :-) I still smile at the image of this little girl hanging from the table only by her teeth :-) 

When their parents die in a fire, they need a tutor. Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) offers to take them in only because he’s totally broke and wants their money. As soon as he has legal custody he tries to kill them; nobody listens to children so nobody believes how evil Olaf is; still, he’s thought to be too irresponsible, unable to take care of children and they’re brought to uncle Mortimer (Billy Connolly) a weird but nice man. I liked him :-) Unfortunately Olaf gets to him and kills him. They are sent to Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep) who has become weak and afraid of everything after her husband died. Olaf gets to her too, but manages to look good in the eyes of the law and regains custody of the children. Minor setback, he learns that he won’t have the money because the children themselves won’t get it until they become of age or get married, so he plots to marry Violet, forcing her to say “I do” by threatening Sunny’s life. His evilness is revealed to all, and Klaus finds out Olaf’s responsible for the fire. Olaf is arrested but then let free and he escapes. The children find a letter of their parents telling them they only need to be together to be able to face everything. 

At the end we see them on the road again, about to be taken to another tutor, but the movie ends here so we won’t know what becomes of them, as we will never know what kind of legacy their parents left to them. What kind of group was theirs, why they were investigating the fires, when the fires started and why, and all this kind of things. Did Olaf start a lot of fires or just one? What did he gain from them, since he’s totally broke? Apparently it doesn’t matter, still the movie left me very unsatisfied.

In Italy: Lemony Snicket una serie di sfortunati eventi