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I'm amazed there's no thread for Lemony Snicket yet -- unless I missed it, or saner minds than mine noticed it first and removed it forthwith so as not to punish the young -- but we saw the movie tonight.
I've read the first book but not the others (yet). The movie worked for me. Nice and depressing with just enough humor from everyone to get you past the essential gloominess. I expected the over-the-top performance from Jim Carrey (and got it) but was surprised by Meryl Streep's wonderfully batty Aunt Josephine.
Don't expect deep plot twists or much suspense at all, and not all of the books' inventiveness made it to the screen.
Great opening scene, fun costumes and sets, even great closing credits. I don't think it'll work for the very young but otherwise, go for it.
[ December 19, 2004, 12:01 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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I really disliked the book (I only read the first one). I just got a bit irked at the who premise of having a bad ending. I mean, I know that's the point, but it depressed me.
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"I know that's the point, but it depressed me."
The Lemony Snicket books are for people who enjoy being depressed, Annie, in the same way that roller coasters are for people who like being nauseated. And in fact there are enough people, even young people, who enjoy being depressed that it's a cottage industry. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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It makes me kind of sad that we, as a society, like to be depressed. I suppose I can't say much about what someone else enjoys, but it doesn't mesh at all with my worldview.
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I don't think it's for people who enjoy being depressed, as much as for people who enjoy dark, black humor. Edward Gorey drawings, Charles Addams cartoons. If you enjoy being depressed go read Russian literature.
The movie is, more or less, the first three books.
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Oh, I think the books are funny and great! But after about book 7 or 8 I did get enough of them. It began to annoy me that the story felt manipulated to result in a bad ending, funnily enough. I know it's a parody of all the stories that have very contrived and false happy endings, but it's the manipulation itself that is annoying, not the particular ending involved.
But I love the funny honesty in them. I love how they show adults who are well meaning but just busy and distracted and dismissive of kids' concerns, and also completely disasterously wrong about the situation the kids are encountering. Almost no books for kids show that, but it seems so prevalent in real life situations.
Another example that comes to mind of the books' hilarious honesty was the song the VFD's sang to people sick in the hospital. How did that go again? All about how we're here to cheer you up despite the horrible stuff that is happening to you, "Ho, ho, ho, hee, hee, hee, Have a heart-shaped balloon."
I heard an interview with the guy who is Lemony Snicket, and he's so funny! When Terry Gross asked about product tie ins, he suggested that he would love to see a McDonald's Unhappy Meal. Oh, and Raia's little sister has a book he signed "To (name), a future orphan". That's so great! Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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The thing that really nagged at me with the movie, and this is just me and very small, was that it took me the longest time not to see Count Olaf as Jim Carrey. Not to say he didn't do a fantastic acting job, just somehow didn't click with me.
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"I don't think it's for people who enjoy being depressed, as much as for people who enjoy dark, black humor."
Well, yeah. Same thing. It's for people who are able to find depression amusing. I include myself in that morbid number. *grin*
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The difference being you can enjoy something with a depressing mood, as opposed to enjoying being depressed yourself.
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Yeah, I don't like being depressed or things with sad endings, but I did like the first book. (the only one I've read) I didn't really see that as a book with a sad ending, because they're still together, there's still possibilities. Even if they're not safe and happy in a family, they still have each other and all. It's just kind of a sarcastic book is all.
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quote: If you enjoy being depressed go read Russian literature.
Oooh, as someone who adores Russian literature, I couldn't let this pass without comment. It's not the darkness that's so great in books by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Gogol, and those guys, but rather the light.
The darkness that they show is just because that's how life is. Books that don't show any of that darkness (like, say, Jane Austen) can be really good, but they can't be as important, somehow. You know? If you are writing about what it's like to be a human being, what it means to be alive, and you never even see or mention all the desperate suffering and misery that is involved in this business of material existence, then how can you even be talking about real life?
I do love Jane, and part of the reason is that you can be sure of being touched and engaged and entertained and shown insight into real truths about people, but also you can be sure that there will be no desperate moral choices between a number of options all equally bad, no starving children, no irremediable horrors of social injustice, and so on. You can count on Miss Jane to give you a break from all that, while still being really, really good.
Still, Jane can't help you in a war zone. She doesn't have anything to say about the children dying in refugee camps, she's only concerned with the well bred girls who are flirting with the officers at home.
Russian literature is so good because it's so true to real life in all it's complexities of horror and exalted joy. And the joy is there, too, stronger than anywhere else. The light is brightest of all in the very heart of darkness.
<Okay, I know that was a terribly serious post to be prompted by an offhand remark in a thread about some funny books, but I just had to get that off my chest! Whew! I feel so much better now! >
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I have read some )actually quite a bit) or Russian Lit, and I disagree...they aren't relistic at all, at least not to me. They seem to me to be over elaborate and depressing, and conflicted.
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I like a lot of Russian literature. It's dark and depressing, sure, but there's a resolution in that you learn something. This is, I think, the most important part.
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I love Russian literature. I was a Russian major for a while, and we had to read Soviet literature. I even liked that, because the writers wer able to, somehow, sneak unSoviet stuff in. I think "We," by Zamiatin, is one of the best books ever written.
Saying that depressed people read depressing books is like saying people who read Stephen King like murders and gory deaths. Some people just like stuff, that's all, and it doesn't necessarily mean that their secret soul has been revealed.
Kids love Lemony Snicket books, and read them avidly. Being a teacher in the world of Gameboy-addicted youngsters, that is enough for me.
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