If someone had blinded me and took me to a preview of this movie and told me it was a Tim Burton movie I would have believed it. Still, in the end I would have left the theater with a bitter taste in my mouth. I mean the story is good, thanks to Lemony Snicket's (Daniel Handler) books, the sets are great, Jim Carrey is more calm than usual (thank god!)and Meryl Streep is wonderful as always. But still something would still be missing. The first thing I would notice would be the music. Far from Tim Burton's long time collaborator Danny Elfman, Thomas Newman in this case delivers a straightforward score with nothing to be remembered by. And you look at Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, The Nightmare Before Christmas or the incredible Big Fish you start to see the difference. After all Brad Silberling is the same man who gave us the poor Casper and the remake of the Wim Wenders classic Wings of Desire called City of Angels, that was once again a watchable movie but far from Wender's genius. Still it's a good enough movie for the holyday season so... have fun.
Review of A Series of Unfortunate Events
