[00:00:07] Speaker A: On this week's prequel episode, we follow up on our Christmas shoes listener polls, learn about Lemony Snicket, and preview A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Hello and welcome back to this film is lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. It's a prequel episode. We have all of our segments. So much to get to. Let's jump right into it with our patron shout outs.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons. That's why.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: One new patron this week at the $2 Newberry Medal Award winner level. Caterzina. Cater. Caterzina. Caterzina. I imagine that's how you pronounce it.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: It looks right to me.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Yeah, let us know. But thank you for supporting us getting that early access to, like, what we're actually talking about and early access to the episodes the night before they come out. And ad free if we ever get ads.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: I don't know about it.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: We could. Honestly, I could do it right now. I just don't think it's worth it. Like, I think I could subscribe us to a. Like a.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Like an auto.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Auto ad service, but I don't know if our number of listeners is large enough for it to really even be. I think it might just be more annoying to listeners than it would be financially beneficial to us. But I could be wrong about that. I actually don't know.
So. Point being, if we ever were to get ads, all of our patrons would get episodes ad free. So. All right, let's get into our Academy Award winning patrons. And they are. Nicole Goble, Eric Harpo, Rat that I am to be trivia. That IMDb trivia made me deeply uncomfortable. Parenthetical. Nathan Vic Apocalypse, Charlene Mathilde, Steve from Arizona Int Draft. Teresa Schwartz, Ian from Wine Country, Kelly Napier Gratch Justgratch. Shelby says they really made a movie where Kraven the Hateable fights Rhino the hot headed sweetheart and said Rhino's the villain. That darn Skag V Frank and Alina Starkov. Thank you all very much for your continued support. I don't know anything about Kraven the Hunter and I refuse to learn.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Did you almost say Kraven the Hatable?
[00:02:24] Speaker A: I did, because that word looks wrong to me. Hate Able does not. There should be an E in it. I don't care.
It should be H A T E A B L E, not H A T.
What?
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Nothing.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: I thought you were. Do you disagree?
That looks like hadable.
Yeah, that looks like something you can put a hat on.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: I think hateable actually. Does have an extra E in it. I think it's just spelled wrong here.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Oh, and that's probably on me because I just type these up. I don't copy paste the.
The patron names in. I just type them over from the. From looking at the list, so I probably just missed the e there.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: I don't know anything about Kraven the Hunter either. So for all I know, he does wear hats. And perhaps he is hatable.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: Okay, hateable does have an e in it. I just. Misfortune. So that's why I almost said hatable. You said that like I was crazy when. No, I'm just. I typed poorly and I mean, not a word I. Why not? It should be something that can wear a hat. Something that could don a hat.
People are hatable. Sometimes small animals or not small, but like medium to large size.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Some kinds of animals are hatable. Yes.
And as I said, for all we know, Kraven the Hunter hattable.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Very possible. We don't know.
It does say that that is a variant spelling of hateable, but I don't believe you. Dictionary.com anyways. And yes, that IMDb trivia also made me deeply uncomfortable. I think he's referring to the Christmas shoes trivia about the dirty kid. The dirty level of the little boy in Christmas shoes.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: How will we know he's poor if he's not dirty? And unke that's true.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: They weren't wrong about that, I guess. Thank you all Academy Award patrons for your continued support. We really appreciate it. Katie, it's time to see what people had to say about the Christmas shoes.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, man. All right.
Feels like a million years ago.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: It's an eternity ago. It's so funny when you skipped literally one week.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: And it just feels like it's been a year since we did the podcast.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: But anyway, here's what people had to say about the Christmas shoes. Kelly, are on Patreon. Yes, we had one vote for the book, one for the movie, and one listener who couldn't decide. And a lot of votes of people who didn't watch or read.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: And that's fairly fair. I saw that the Patreon poll at least was dominated by yes, did not read or watch. And you know what? Fair.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: However, new year, fresh start. Even if you didn't read or watch, you can still feel free to say, hey, I listened.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Right?
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Here's what I thought.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: If you listen to the episode, you know, or whatever, and you happen to have some feelings, feel free to Chime those in even if you didn't read or watch, which somebody may have. Who knows? I don't know. But.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: But Kelly Napier said both were terrible. True. But the book was slightly less terrible. Also true in my opinion. Although a lot of other people disagreed with me and Kelly.
The only thing in the movie that made me chuckle was the fact that all the shoppers at the store on Christmas Eve were men. Way to perpetuate the stereotype that men are absent minded people who leave everything to the last minute. Yeah, I don't know if the stereotype is absent minded so much as like.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Well, I guess I. I think she just means absent minded in the context of like for forgets that it's like holidays and like emotional things like that. I think it's. What. Yeah, maybe just a different word choice. But yeah, I think that's what she was going for.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Our next comment was from Charlene, who said, pretty sure Rob Lowe was still on the west wing in 2002. I forgot he was on the West Wing. Yeah. Though that might have been around the time he was getting ready to leave. So just taking other work where he could get it. Maybe shrugging emoji.
I've also never heard this song until now. Oh, you're blessed, Charlene.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Wow, that's amazing. I will say this, it's not something I hear a lot when you. I'm your hatred for. I was like, I've heard that song, but it's not one where I'm like, oh yeah, that song.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Well, the thing is, is that it got a lot of radio play at Christmas time. Specifically when I was younger. Probably within a few years of it coming out. Yeah. Like around the time when it came out. And we always listened to the Christmas radio station when I was growing up, like anytime we were in the car.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: At Christmas time it was Christmas radio station, which I don't really do anymore because we don't have a good Christmas radio station around here.
Sad to say.
So my hatred of it really stems from like that part of my life.
Okay. So Charlene said, I've also never heard of this song until now. But once you said it was released in 2000, that made a lot more sense. Yeah, it does have the same kind of vibe that like some country music did at around the time.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: It's very classic. Early 2000s, like gospel country.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's giving like it reminds me of.
What was that song? I'm proud.
No, no, no, that's too. That's too. The other way around. I'm thinking of that. I'm already there. Take a look around that one. It gives that.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: I don't know what that is, but I do. Or what is that? Y think might just be called Already There.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: But you know the song that I'm talking about.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Yes, it is. And that song is by Lone Star. Yeah, I'm already there.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: It also kind of reminds me of the Butterfly Kisses song. Just like very, like, emotionally manipulative.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: I don't know what the Butterfly Kisses.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: You know what? I don't know already.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: There was 2001 though, so.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Yeah. I think Butterfly Kisses might have been a little bit before this, but I feel like they're all in the same O.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: 97 for butterfly kisses. I just don't. What is butter? I got.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: It's like a. It's like a father.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Very similar.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know if I've heard that. Where's the chorus?
The cake looks funny.
Yeah, it is very similar. It's that one in particular has that same kind of like singing from the perspective of like.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: Where the. Yeah. Or like a little kid is addressing the person singing the song. Yeah.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Okay, back to Charlene's comment. She went on to say, I think the Mariah Carey one and the one Cindy Lou who sings in the live action Grinch movie are the only two modern Christmas songs that have found their way into my brain.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Not Ariana. Ariana.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: Which one are you thinking of by Ariana?
[00:09:45] Speaker A: The Christmas song. Isn't that what it's called?
[00:09:47] Speaker B: I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: I don't think it's the Santa, tell me.
This is like Uzi Santa, tell me.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I've heard it.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Oh, I was just saying that's another modern Christmas song that I think is very popular.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: Like, it was my point. Along with like Mariah Carey and the Cindy Lou. I was always saying. I was like, I'm surprised. Not Ariana. Like, that wouldn't make that list because that one is stuck. Gets stuck in my head.
Santa, tell me anyways.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Well, that was a fun journey.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Rob Lowe was still on the West Wing. He was on the west wing from 99 till 2006.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Interesting. So maybe he was hard up for cash.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Yeah, he also. I just. When I was scrolling through his IMDb just to confirm that the.
It always blows my mind. I always forget network TV exists. He has been on 75 episodes of Lone Star or 911. Lone Star or whatever, which is. So there's like all those 911 shows.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: And he is.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: And I only ever see ads for them, and they look like the craziest thing you could imagine.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: He is from one of the most famous. He's in one of the most famous clips from that show.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: The one with the Frozen.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Frozen, yes. Where that's Rob Lowe, where he. And he, like, starts doing CPR on his hand. Hands go through the person's chest or whatever. Yeah.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: But I was like, I think they're dead.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: It's so funny. I looked at. I was like, 75.
How long has that show been out? What is going on? It just. It's not even. There's a whole different universe out there. It's a whole different universe.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: Every time I see, like, a clip from that show, it looks like. It almost looks like AI generated nonsense.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: No, 100%. It's. It's a. It's fascinating. You say that show. There's, like, four of them, I think.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: But yes.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: Well, any of them. Because I don't know the difference. They all look the same.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: All right. Well, that was fun. Thank you for. For sending us on that journey. Charlene.
Our next comment was from Nathan, who said, this one goes pretty easily to the movie for me, because the author appears to have gotten tired of writing halfway through the book, after his change of heart, Robert reconnects with Kate and then shares the good news with his mother, Ellen, who is still alive at that point. She doesn't die till the last 10 pages of the book, when the entire plot has already been wrapped. It truly feels like Donna Van Lear came up with the ending at the grave and forgot to kill Ellen off at any point during the story, so she just tacked it on the end because she couldn't be bothered to rewrite the story.
Honestly. I'm gonna say also that it was probably completely unnecessary of Donna Van Lear to kill off Robert's mother in the context of the book.
In the context of either, honestly. Because I don't feel like you need to show that to have the ending scene at the grave, because we know it's been 15 years, and we know she was already old, so we could put the pieces together there.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Well, I guess in the movie, it at least kind of tracks if it happens before the interaction with the little boy was. What I was getting at is that in the movie, at least with the little boy, he's thinking of his relationship with his mom, so that at least motivates again, the thing that doesn't need motivation of a human being giving $5 to a little boy so that his ma. His dying mother can have shoes or whatever. But.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Yeah, right. No, and I. I do believe we had at least one comment that talked about that. Yeah.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, they did, too, here. Said she doesn't die until the last 10 pages of the book when the entire plot has already wrapped.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And then. But Mo also mentioned it. Yeah.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Nathan went on to say there is also a jump forward at the end, which starts abruptly with Robert finding out his daughter is pregnant with a boy. It's a weird jump that acts like it's filling in a plot gap, but the daughter was a kid when we last saw her and was barely a relevant character, so it's just confusing and irrelevant.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: She is not an important character in the movie.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: She's not particularly. No, it's even weirder because it's not the same time as when Robert visits the grave.
That is a second time jump, which we can see because it has its own date of December 2000. Yeah. So I think the time jump, There are a couple time jumps within, like, at the beginning and the end of this book that are strange to say the least. Yeah. Not particularly well handled. I think the point of the time jump, where we see that Robert's daughter is pregnant is just meant to convey to us that he made all of the changes that he had decided to make. Right. Like. Like Scrooge. He became as good a man as the good old city had ever known.
Like, to show us that he did, in fact, stay with his wife and, like, fix their marriage and whatever.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Huh?
[00:14:40] Speaker B: And all that stuff.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Like, look, See?
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Yeah, look. See? He actually did it.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Probably still unnecessary, but.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: You know, I'm not Jonathan Van Lear. Thank God.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Hey, you don't know that. She may be great.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: She may be. Maybe she is.
All in all, it feels like Donna had ideas to flesh out the story more and decided to include them all without developing them.
The film is not particularly good either, but its plot mostly holds together. While I recognize it's a bit manipulative, I thought it really earned its emotional beats. The actor playing Nathan overcame his lack of appropriate shabbiness to give a really great performance for a child actor. And his scene with his mom where she explains that she's going to die was legitimately moving.
I also thought Rob Lowe doing good work as a lawyer made sense for his character. So you can see that he's a good person who just needs to be reminded of what really matters in life. The traditional movie way of making him an evil lawyer is a Bit silly. And I think this seems more true to life.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: I agree that it's a little more interesting for him not to just be like a cartoonishly evil, like doing cartoonishly evil lawyer things, but I still think it muddies the point a little bit. And for him to be doing meaningful, important work as a lawyer, I don't know, it's hard because like, obviously, yes, he also needs to make time for his family and stuff like that, but when the stuff he's doing is so important that the people he's doing it for at the end come up to him and go, thank you for saving our livelih.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: It's like, okay, should he just have not. Should he have cut up or like, you know, should he have taken off early and like went home to like hang out with his family and not got. I don't know. I'm just saying it. What I think would have been better is if he was doing not cartoonishly evil stuff, but just like generic money making stuff.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Well, I mean, that's more of the book's approach where he's just doing kind of gender.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: That's what it sounds like. Yeah. You said he was doing like he.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Like handles all the bankruptcy cases.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And so if he was just doing like what. I don't know if he was like a patent lawyer or something, whatever. But it's something that like he's do. He's so committed to it because he wants to make a bunch of money or blah, blah, blah. Yeah, like that's. It doesn't have to be cartoonishly evil. He doesn't need to be like shutting down the orphanage or whatever. Like that would be ridiculous.
But just make it something where it's like he doesn't actually need to spend like 20, you know, all this time away from his family working on this because like he's doing it for all the. For money, but they don't actually need the money because they're happy with their life as it is and blah, blah, blah, and they just want to spend more time with him. Whereas in the movie it's like, well, actually he kind of did need to do all this work because otherwise all these poor farmers would have lost their farms.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean when we discuss. The movie is kind of trying to have its cake and eat it too with that. And it got muddled for me in both, honestly, because, you know, we have the tactic of the movie where we're kind of trying to have it both ways.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: But then the book, I felt like didn't really do what you were describing either.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: Because he is kind of just doing, like, generic legal work.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: But he's also doesn't seem particularly like, oh, I got to make money, money, money.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: So I didn't really think it was particularly well handled either way.
Continuing with Nathan's thoughts, he went on to say, in my headcanon, not only are Dalton and Ellen a couple in the movie, but in the book, they're in a throuple with Dawson's Dalton's still living wife, which I can make a textual case for.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Because there is a singular line in the book. And here's the thing.
I know that Donna Van Lear didn't mean this.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Sure. You would assume, based on her canon.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: I understand that Donna Van Lear didn't mean this. And I'm gonna have to find.
Where are my reading notes, Mom? Dalton and Hetty were more than just neighbors.
Ooh, spicy.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: They were also friends, I assume is.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: What she was saying. Yeah, they were also friends, I believe is what she was going for. However, you could make a textual argument neighbors. Nice that they were perhaps more than just friends as well.
The scene where Nathan actually puts the dancing shoes on his mom was completely unnecessary. It felt like somebody with a fetish wanted it to be there.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: I don't know if I, I think, I think it feels like a. I.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Like, don't remember that scene. So clearly it did not have a big impact.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: Not the bed. He just walks down to the end of the bed and puts the shoes on her. Like I remember it. I, I, fair enough. I, I don't think I felt. It felt perfectly. Like it didn't feel weird or out of place to me. I felt like, yeah, he gets your shoes, and then she can't move in bed, so he goes and puts the shoes on her. Like, so she can wear them. Like, it's fine. But I will never disagree that I will never, I will never, I will never discount the chance that somebody with a foot fetish got their. Got mixed up in this somehow. Because that tends to happen.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: In movies for some reason.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: So it does.
Speaking of the shoes, Nathan also said, I thought the shoes were pretty fun looking and not at all ugly, but I have like 50 pairs of shoes, so maybe my standards are too low.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: It's very clearly very subjective, but very subjective.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: For me, it's mostly the early 2000s. Ness.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Yeah. They just felt like a very specific, dated look. That is not.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: I also don't like kitten heels. No, not, not into low heels.
I had two thoughts about the heart Transplant. So I looked up the answers. I wondered, if you're going to die without a heart, wouldn't it be better to receive a heart with hepatitis? And can an adult really receive a teenager's heart? It turns out that people who do not have hepatitis do receives. Receive hearts from hepatitis positive donors. And it has a roughly equivalent survival rates over the first year.
So she could have had that.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: So I.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: She will finish that. Also, adults can receive hearts from adolescent or even pediatric.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: That's crazy.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: That is kind of crazy. Like a teenager, maybe not so much, but like a kid's heart is crazy to me.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Wild. But I guess though, if they've been operating with such so much reduced blood flow, if their own heart has been so, like, it's maybe not that much of a difference, at least initially, but that actually was a thought I had. It makes perfect sense. I'm like, yeah, like, obviously having hep C or whatever it was is not good, but I also don't think it's like a death sentence like a heart. You know what I mean? I think it's somewhat true. You'll deal with health issues and stuff, but if the option is that or just dying from heart failure, I think you take the hep C or whatever. And now this also may be a thing that maybe it's not been that long, but 20 years ago, maybe, maybe, maybe they were a little bit more stringent about how they did it because the technology wasn't as good, so they wanted to make sure. I don't know.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: Well, and when I was watching, I just kind of like assumed that maybe, maybe there was like some kind of law in place or maybe it was like an ethical thing where like, they can't ethically transfer. Yeah, maybe that changed in the intervening years.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: We've changed some. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, interesting, because I did have. Yeah, like I said, I had a similar.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: I mean, all I'm hearing here is that she could have lived.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: But yeah, because like I said, that was my thing. If I'm her, I'm like, I don't care. Put the hep C heart in. Like what?
Like I said, I don't know.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Give me the hep C, doc.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Because again, I think you can just take.
You can just take a bunch of medications and then maybe get a liver transplant. Like, and I think a liver transplant is.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Well, and I mean, to be fair, this is supposed to be set in the mid-80s.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Oh, right. And, well, then in that case. Yeah, I could see.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: And considering, like, I was just thinking, I don't know about hep C specifically, but I was considering how far like HIV treatment has come since then. Maybe this would have been a death sentence in 1985. I don't. I don't know.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Nathan went on to say, Rob definitely acted like a jerk to Jack in the shop, but he was right. His car broke down again basically right away. So it really seems like it was a bad repair.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: I didn't think about that. But you're not wrong. It doesn't break down again, like immediately.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: I appreciated the podcast overlap with God awful Movies and I assume that is where Brian was getting his perception of the movie coming in. I agree that the film wasn't as toxic as I anticipated coming in or.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: I think it was. I say that I actually don't know if I ever listened to that episode. I think I did. I can't remember of God awful movies.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: I mean, knowing that they covered. Covered it though would still just like knowing that would still color.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Yeah, well, no, because I. Well, maybe a little bit Color A little bit. I think actually for me what it was was big Joel did a video about the Christmas shoes, which I was actually gonna have us watch, and I forgot about it about the Christmas shoes. And he was very critical of like the plot and maybe a little bit differently critical than Gam would have been. But his was more about like the. The weird relationship between like Rob's Lowe's character and the little kid character and how they're kind of like the same character and about how like none of the people in the movie will just give the kid money for the shit.
His. His video is very interesting, but I think that was also part of what was coloring it because I believe I had seen that video before we watched it. And that would have been years ago at this point, but. So yeah, I think my perception was colored coming in, which made me expect it to be a little bit more like sinister, like obviously evil than it was, which again, I think it's still there kind of under the sun surface, but I just don't think it says on the surface evil as it. As a potentially, I don't know, is interesting. Speaking of God awful movies, keep. Keep your ear out for the future on that. That's all I'll say right now.
Spoilers teases. Yeah.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Our last comment on Patreon was from Shelby, who said I'm not picking the book or the movie because neither of these deserve the crown. But I had a few thoughts. I knew the kid who couldn't keep a goldfish alive was gonna get a bitey little land shark. And I hated every second of it. That mom really died so her son could get a dog.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: I don't know if it was a direct one to one transaction, but.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: But if had she lived, would the kid have gotten a dog? I think so, eventually. I don't think he would have gotten a dog as quickly.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Maybe not as quickly. No, I agree. Yeah.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: I interpreted the scene in the classroom where the teacher reads the story and Maggie cries about the shoes a little differently. I think it was another scene where they wanted to set up that she's sick and then she covers up by pretending she's crying over the story. I don't think. Did she know? Because she doesn't know. She thinks she has the flu.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, because at this point she has not. I don't think has had that meeting where the doctor showed up and was like, oh, we thought. Because he basically just comes like. We thought it was the flu. Turns out, no, it's heart failure. You're dying. Yeah, I don't think. Because this is like, right away in the movie.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: Yeah, this is like the first scene we see her.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if that tracks because again, I don't think she thinks she's, like, mortally, like, ill.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: I do. I think the scene would have been better if this had been the case.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: And maybe it was supposed to be there and for some reason in the edit.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Maybe it got shuffled around because of.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: Like, they wanted to introduce a certain character. I don't know. Not impossible.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: But Shelby went on to say the movie didn't need it, though. They set up the shoes better later. And there's already lots of foreshadowing that she's ill. Yeah, I. I agree.
In the book, Rob's mom dies after Maggie does. I understand why the movie moved that to before. It gives Rob a reason to see himself in this kid who wants to buy the shoes. But in the book, I found it kind of funny. As soon as her son's marriage is fixed, she goes, ah, yes, my work here is done. And then she dies.
I kind of similarly found that funny. Shall we want to also mention that 30 second shot of Robb staring at the kid like, oh, my gosh, a pore was pretty good too.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. When he's, like, staring at him.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Staring at him forever and ever. And I was like, deciding if he's. Just give him the $5.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Give him $5, please.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: Just give him five.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: I will give him $5 if it gets me out of the scene. Please.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: I will also give you $5 if it's this gets me out of this.
I think Rob's arc resolves a little better in the movie. In the book, he tells his wife that he almost bought them gifts, then decided, I'm gonna give them me instead. Like, well done, you hero. You didn't spend Christmas Day all by yourself at the law office. That's just the greatest gift you could have given them. But in the movie, he gives up the gifts and goes straight to their concert, AKA the thing they've been asking him to do the whole movie. It at least feels like a resolution. He listened to what they wanted from him. That is fair. Yeah, I didn't think about that, but that is a fair point.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: P.S. speaking of Hallmark movies, did you hear about Holiday Touchdown? The one that's definitely not about Ms. And Mr. Taylor Swift? I did not hear about that. I'm a little glad I didn't.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Sounds fascinating.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: Sounds like a Hallmark Christmas movie.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: I mean, I'm surprised, though, that they could do something about that because I. Taylor Swift is like, a little kind of litigious. I feel like.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:01] Speaker B: Surprised that anyone would go for that close to that.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: And. Yeah. I don't know.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: It's interesting and like, you know, good for her in a way.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: But, yeah, that's interesting.
We didn't have comments on Instagram, but we did have one vote for the book and two for the movie.
And on Goodreads, we had zero votes for the book, one for the movie, And Mikko said the shoes are so clearly shoehorned. Haha. Into the narrative, especially in the book. Okay, maybe not shoehorned, but they have no reason to be shoes. The movie makes a good change by giving the mother the memory of the dance shoes.
The movie isn't good, but I think it makes some good changes like that.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: That's fair.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: For example, unlike Katie remembered, I had a lot of dead mothers to keep track of. Okay.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: And I was grilling. To be fair to her, I was grilling her in the moment because I could.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: Yeah. I was like, flipping through the book, trying to figure out when everything happened. And you were, like, shouting at me.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: I wasn't shouting at you.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: You were shouting a little bit.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Oh, no. I.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: For example, unlike Katie remembered, in the book, Robert's mother dies only after Nathan's mother. It's so weird with the. What the movie does feels much more appropriate than killing her. After Robert's change of heart.
Is there even a plot in the book? It's more like the minimum viable product for a Christmas story. The movie at least tries to have a story and knit together Nathan and Robert's pretty separate narratives. For those reasons like these, I have to vote for the movie.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: There you go.
There you go.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: So our winner this time was the Movie with four votes to the books, two plus Shelby, who refused to decide.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: Fair enough.
Thank you all for all of your comments and all of your votes. I say all. We didn't get a ton. It's the holiday season and it's a movie.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Nobody. It's a weird, obscure movie that nobody's.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Seen or heard, so. Or Red.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: Maybe next year we'll try to cover something more. I don't even know what.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: We'll figure it out. It's fine. I think people would have hopefully enjoyed the episode, regardless of, you know, it being a little bit more obscure in this regard. All right, that's it for all of our feedback. It's time now to learn a little bit about Lemony Snicket.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
This is kind of a Lemony Snicket. Daniel Handler. But if I had said Daniel Handler, no one would know who I was talking about, because Lemony Snicket is the pen name of American author Daniel Handler, as well as an in universe character in the Series of Unfortunate Events books, as well as the narrator.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: That was a surprise of those books. When we watched the series, the Netflix series, a character character, I was like, oh, okay.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: And in keeping with the spirit of the books, Handler often refers to himself as Lemony Snicket's personal representative rather than as the author of the series.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: So we're doing kind of like a.
[00:32:21] Speaker B: It's kind of like a meta in joke.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Right. But I was gonna say like Princess Bride a little bit.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Kind of. Yeah.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: Where Goldman is pretending to be. Whatever.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Not the. It's S. Morgan's story. He's pretending to not be the author of the story. Yeah.
The name originally came from when Handler was doing research for his first book, The Basic Eight. In a 2016 interview, he stated, quote, the pseudonym's been around since I did research for the Basic eight when I used it to contact right wing organizations to get pamphlets and learn their dogma. And it became a running joke with me and my friends. They gave me Lemony Snicket business cards. One year, we invented a drink called the Lemony Snicket.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: What's the Lemony Snicket? Surely you said that somewhere with the cocktail recipe.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Have to do more research on that. And when I started writing children's books and the character of the narrator emerged and my editor and I decided I needed a pseudonym. Well, I'd had a pseudonym all along.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: Fun fact. I did meet Daniel Handler. I did not know this very early 2014. I feel like. Surely I mentioned this when we were watching your Netflix series.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: That's. Yeah, it's been a while.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: Literally probably like six months before we met.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that is. That is like right before we met.
[00:33:37] Speaker B: I met him at an author event at a library in St. Louis, and I have a couple signed books. He was a very funny speaker. Like, it was an enjoyable author event from my memory. My impression of him overall, which will probably come as a surprise to no one who's interacted with his work, is that he seems like he probably considers himself a little bit edgy, quote, unquote.
You know what I mean?
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Yeah. I also wouldn't be surprised if maybe 2014, that was. We were still on the back end of that being or even in the middle end of that being.
I think there are plenty. I'm not saying I would have considered myself, quote, unquote, edgy or whatever in 2014, but that, that was. We're in that time period where a lot of the online Internet discourse, there was a period of even, like, progressive people were like, making jokes that we no longer would find acceptable jokes.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: I've got more. I don't know if you looked at my notes at all.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: No, I didn't.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Got more.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: So it will probably come further as no surprise that Handler has had a cause, a couple of controversies under his belt, particularly. At the November 2014 National Book Awards ceremony, Handler made a controversial remark after author Jacqueline Woodson was presented with an award for her book Brown Girl Dreaming. During the ceremony, he said that Woodson was allergic to watermelon and, like, made a joke about her being allergic to watermelon, which is a racist stereotype. I don't. I don't actually don't know if that's a stereotype outside of America.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I have no idea.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: But it is here.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: Yes, it is traditional racist stereotype in America that black people like watermelon from. Or I don't even know where that comes from.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: The South.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: I mean, surely. I just. I don't like, I've never heard of the. The origins of that one.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: So his comments were obviously immediately criticized, and he apologized and donated $10,000 to the organization. We need diverse books Promised to match donations up to 100,000.
Following that, in a New York Times op ed, Woodson wrote, quote, in light of. In making light of that deep and troubled history, Handler had come from a place of ignorance, but underscored the need for her mission to give people a sense of this country's brilliant and brutal history. So no one ever thinks they can walk onto a stage one evening and laugh at another's too often painful past. Not a great look.
And then in February 2018, Handler signed an online pledge to boycott conferences that do not have and enforce harassment policies. So we're in The Thick of MeToo here. February 2018. Then, underneath his comment pledging that, author Kate Mesner recounted an incident in which Handler had made inappropriate jokes directed at her, apparently, such as, are you a virgin, too? And these children's book events always turn into orgies.
Which then led to other women also accusing Handler of verbal sexual harassment at book conferences.
He did apologize for that as well, although it was in kind of a I'm listening and learning sort of vein. Yeah, I read the first eight books in A Series of Unfortunate Events before kind of aging out of the series. I did enjoy them. It was some, like, one of those series that I always kind of meant to go back and finish, but I never did.
Overall, he just strikes me as a particular type of guy. Yeah, like in a 2017 interview, he also described himself as, quote, having developed a feminist consciousness after reading works by women writers in college. Just like a particular type of guy.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: All right, that is it for our Learning Things segment, but we're gonna learn a little bit more about A Series of Unfortunate Events. The books.
This is the story of the three Baudelaire children.
Violet loved to invent. Her brother Klaus loved to read, and their little sister Sunny, she loved to bite.
My name is Lemony Snicket, and it is my duty to tell you their tale.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: Okay, so this is gonna be kind of a brief overview because the movie is based on three of the books, and I didn't want to go, like, deep into the weeds on all three books, so I just tried to keep this kind of brief. So. A Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of 13 children's novels written by aforementioned author Daniel Handler under the pen name Lemony Snicket. The books are characterized by Victorian Gothic tones and absurdist textuality. They're frequently noted for their dark humor, sarcastic storytelling, and anachronistic elements, as well as frequent cultural and literary allusions. They've also been classified as postmodern and metafictional. Writing, with the plot evolution through the later novels being cited as an exploration of the transition from the innocence of childhood to the more like, moral complexity of adulthood. As the series progresses, the Baudelaires, the main characters, have to face that their actions have become morally ambiguous, and we kind of blur the lines between which characters are quote, unquote, good and which characters are quote, unquote evil.
Prior to the publication of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Handler had never written for children.
This was his first foray into children's literature. He has cited Edward Gorey and Roald Dahl as influences on his writing style for the series.
Two references that make absolute perfect sense. If you know anything about Edward Gorey and Roald Dahl.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: Roald Dahl, I was trying to remember, what is Edward Gorey like? What is he known for?
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Edward Gorey maybe is best known for his, like, ABCs series. The ABCs of Edward Gorey, I think.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: Oh, the Theatrical Adventures.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Gashly Crumb Tinies. That's what I was thinking of.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: Oh, what were you. What is it that you. What is the thing you said? Sorry, it was just words. I didn't.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: The Gashly Crumb Tiniest.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: I've never.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: A very gory Alphabet book. I've never heard of it. So it's a series of.
It's like an Alphabet book, and it's a series of illustrations, and all of the letters are people dying in horrible ways.
A is for Amy who fell down the stairs.
[00:40:32] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds familiar. Now, the title, though, meant nothing to me for whatever reason.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: And his. Edward Gorey's illustrations are also very recognizable and also make a lot of sense within the context of A Series of Unfortunate Events.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: So the 2004 film that we're covering, as I mentioned, is based on the first three books in the series, the Bad Beginning, the Reptile Room, and the Wide window, the first two of which were published in 1999 and the third in 2000.
Following the release of the first novel, the books quickly gained significant popularity, critical acclaim, and commercial success worldwide. So it was also like, right in the heyday of Harry Potter. So it was absolutely the right time to be publishing a series of weird kid children's books.
Criticisms of the series include it being repetitive and formulaic, as well as its general darkness, a thing that a lot of parents tend to not like in children's literature, for whatever reason. Much like Roald Dahl's work, the series leans into acknowledging that the world can be a very dark and dangerous place, especially for children, and that adults are not necessarily to be trusted. Wholesale.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: I will say the repetitive thing is one of the maybe criticisms I had of the TV show.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Was that okay? Like, we kind of. Yeah. We repeat kind of the same. Same story beats over and over. And I. I do think it gets a little more interesting later on when we get a little more into, like, the moral ambiguity of, like, who's doing what. But, yeah, I mean, that was kind of one of the reasons that I fell out of reading the series because, like, I read eight books, and I was like, okay, we just kind of keep.
[00:42:25] Speaker A: Somewhere else.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: Keep doing the same thing over and over again.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: Another person. And then they're also evil in some way or whatever. Or weird.
[00:42:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Or more likely ineffectual.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, that's. Yeah, it's been. Yeah, I remember very. It's been so long since we watched.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: We watched that, like, as it was.
[00:42:41] Speaker A: Coming, which was 2017.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: 2017 to 2019. I want to say almost 10 years ago. Lifetime ago.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: Years ago. Yeah. Yeah. All right, that is it for all of the book facts. Let's learn a little bit about A Series of Unfortunate Events, the film.
No one knows the precise cause of the Baudelaire fire, and just like that, the Baudelaire children became the Baudelaire orphans.
I'm taking you to live with your closest relative, and he's an actor by trade. Isn't that exciting?
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Hello, hello, hello.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: I am your beloved Count Olaf.
Series of Unfortunate events is a 2004 film directed by Brad Silberling, known for City of Angels, Casper, Moonlight Mile, and then he's done a bunch of TV shows, episodes of TV shows. It was written by Robert Gordon, who wrote Galaxy Quest, men in black 2, and addicted to Love and Fun Fact. It was also shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, who just did A Little Princess, but has also done Sleepy Hollow and Children of Men from our films, Maybe others, but those are the main ones. But, yeah, that cinematographer, the film star. I think I mentioned that when I said. When I was saying, oh, he did A Little Princess as Emmanuel. I think I said, he's also doing. He also did A Series of Unfortunate Events. So the film stars Jim Carrey, Jude Law, Liam Aiken, Emily Browning, Timothy Spall, Catherine O'Hara, Cedric the Entertainer, Luis Guzman, Jennifer Coolidge and Meryl Streep. What a cast.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: I did not remember that. I've not seen this movie, like, probably since around the time it came out.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: I think I saw it. Yeah. Like, when it came out, I did not remember that.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: Half of those people are in this.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: I think I remembered Catherine O'Hara was in it. None of the other people rung a bell as being in this.
[00:44:36] Speaker B: To me, obviously, Jim Carrey. I knew Emily Browning was in it and I remembered Meryl Streep was in it. Everybody else with a gun to my head could not have told you those people were in this movie.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: Yeah, well, Liam Aiken is the boy, but he's not like a well known actor. Yeah, like I don't think. Or he may have gone on to do other stuff, but he, you know, he's not. I don't think he ever got as famous as like Emily Browning did.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:58] Speaker A: The film has a 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 62% on Metacritic, and a 6.8 out of 10 on IMDb and it made $211 million against a budget of 140 million. So not a huge success.
However, it did win an Oscar for Best makeup for Valley O'Reilly and Bill Corso, both of which have been guest judges on Face Off. I was interested to see who did it because this felt like a very V. Neil like type of thing. And so I was like, wonder if V. Neal did it. And I saw Vale O'Reilly and Bill Corso and I was like, those names sound familiar? And I clicked on them. As soon as I saw the pictures, I was like, yep, they've been on Face Off. And I did confirm it, but yeah, it was nominated for. But it was also nominated for best score, best costumes and best art direction. So some of the technical art directiony kind of stuff.
So Nickelodeon movies purchased the rights to the novels in May of 2000. And initially Terry Gilliam and Roman Polanski were interested in making the film in early stages. Horrible people for different reasons.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: Yeah, stylistically, Terry Gilliam I could see.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: Oh, Terry Gilliam I could see.
I would have to watch another Roman Polanski film.
[00:46:10] Speaker B: Roman Polanski, I don't know.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: I don't know enough about his whole. Like I said, I've seen Rosemary's Baby and I've seen Chinatown and I think that's it. From his very random catalog.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: That feels very random to me. Maybe he liked the books.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: I assume that's why. It's just that he was interested in me. Didn't say that he was even really considered this. Yeah, I don't know.
They probably just expressed in an interview or something.
Canadian filmmaker Guy Madden was actually Daniel Handler's pick to direct. Guy Madden is kind of a. Would have been really interesting. But I looked him up and I. Because I'd never seen any of his stuff and I'd never even heard of him. He is like Canada's maybe most famous director in terms of like art house direct, like most like. What's the word? Celebrated maybe director. His movies are not fit. You will have never heard of maybe of any movie he's ever made unless you're like a movie, right? Buff, snob, whatever. But he's a very like surrealist kind of like director. Like a lot of his stuff is very weird and esoteric in a way that's. Or at least appears to be. I have not seen any of it. I was just kind of clicking through trailers and looking and. And in like the Wikipedia articles, a lot of his films are described as like surrealist and stuff like that. That he seems like a very interesting director who makes very interesting movies.
Maybe a little too interesting for a kids movie based on what I've seen, but maybe not. I don't know.
And then in 2002, Barry Sonnenfeld was announced as the director who was the director of the Addams Family. The Addams Family values Men in Black get Shorty, among other things. And Sonnenfeld hired handler Daniel Handler, that is to write the script. Originally planning to make it a musical.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:47:56] Speaker A: And Jim Carrey was cast as Olaf in September of 2002. But the film pretty quickly ran into problems as Paramount only wanted a $100 million budget for the film while most of the people involved in the project thought that was way too small of a budget for like the vision they had for the film. They thought it was going to be significantly more than that, which the budget ended up being 140 million. Eventually DreamWorks would come on to co finance the film, but when all of that stuff went down, Sonnenfeld left the project and Jim Carrey decided to stick around as long as he had a say in who the new director was. So Brad Silberling would then sign on to direct in February of 2003. And when he came on, Robert Gordon also replaced Daniel Handler as a screenwriter. Apparently Handler had written like eight drafts of the film at that point, but they didn't end up using him. And he was offered a writing. Well, I'm sure they used parts of it. Who knows? I mean it is based on the book, so I imagine they use parts of it. But he was offered a writing credit by the Writers Guild for all of his work on the scripts up until that point, but he actually refused it because he felt that it would be unfair to Gordon because he wasn't the person who wrote the script. That was interesting, the thing. But he did approve all of the changes in the film, according to Wikipedia, and who knows what that means.
He at least didn't cause a huge stink about it in the press or anything like that. That.
So Filming began in November 2003 at the Paramount Studios backlot and sound stages. Then it moved to Downey Studios, which is an old NASA facility that was a studio back lot for a while, which actually where they filmed Christmas with the Cranks. Oh, it's like one of the main. That whole street that Christmas with the Cranks takes place on was built at Downey Studios, which is no longer a studio anymore. It was closed down and is now a shopping mall in LA America. Yep.
But Downey Studios had a big water tank, apparently, which is where they filmed some of the latest.
And the water stuff.
So talking about the visual style of the film, Lubezki compared it a little bit to Sleepy Hollow. But when talking about the specific color choices that they made for this film, he said, quote, the story is very episodic. So we picked a different color scheme for each section. For example, Count Olaf's house has a lot of greens, blacks and grays. The house of Uncle Monty has a lot of greens and browns and a bit of yellow. And House of Aunt Josephine has blues and blacks.
When the children. Oh, so getting into some I need to be trivia.
So take this all with a grain of salt. These next couple. When the children first meet Count all off and Jim Carrey says, wait, let me do that one more time. Give me the line again quickly, while it's fresh in my mind. Was not actually in the script. Carrie accidentally forgot his line, stayed in character and wanted to try it again, but they kept rolling and they felt it worked, so they left it. Or so they used it in the film. Not in the film.
Again, who knows? The number one IMV tree effect. Those kind of things are often not accurate, but yeah, you never know.
So during production, Liam Aiken, who plays Klaus Baudelaire, grew 4 1/2 inches over the course of the production, ending up being taller than Emily Browning, who he plays the younger brother of Nice because he hit a growth spurt while they were filming.
Apparently, at some point, Tim Burton was attached to direct with Johnny Depp playing Count Olaf and Glenn Close playing Aunt Josephine.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Tim Burton makes so much, so much sense property. Like. Like on paper. Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: That's the thing to me. Like, the fact that you're like, it's got it. Oh, my God. Tim Burton makes so much sense is why you should not get Tim Burton.
[00:51:44] Speaker B: In my opinion, Johnny Depp is.
I don't think would have worked. I just. I can't even say why. I just don't think that would have worked.
[00:51:53] Speaker A: Count Olaf's an exhausting character, period.
And I think Jim, or not Jim, I think Johnny Depp would have truly made it. Like, I'm sure it would have been fine, but I bet it would have. I don't know. I. I think it would have been a lot. A lot less in, like, on the enjoyable level of Jack Sparrow and a lot more like his version of Willy Wonka. Yeah, would be my guess.
[00:52:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:23] Speaker A: So, getting into some reviews, Robert K. Elder of the Chicago Tribune praised Rick Heinrich's production design and Jim Carrey's performance as a scene stealer, calling the film, quote, exceptionally clever, hilariously gloomy and bitingly subversive. Writing for the Washington Post, Dessin Thomas or Thompson reasoned over a fellow filmgoer's characterization of Count Olaf, saying, olaf is a humorless villain in the book. He's not amusing like Carrie at all. To which I would counter, if you can't let Carrie be Carrie, put someone boring and less expensive in the role. In his various disguises, he's rubbery, inventive and improvisationally inspired. I particularly liked his passing Imitation of a Dinosaur quote.
So somebody was saying that the Olaf in the movie is not like the Olaf in the book, and this critic is saying, well, you got Jim Carrey to do it, so he's going to be Jim Carrey.
Writing for the Boston Globe, Ty Bur said, quote, director Brad Silberling has essentially made a Tim Burton movie without the weird shafts of adolescent pain. At the same time, Silberling's not a hack like Chris Columbus. God damn coming at him. And Snicket has more zip and inspired film crafts than the first two Harry Potter films. The film's no masterpiece, but at least you're in the hands of people who know what they're doing. The movie, like the books, flatter children's innate sense that the world is not a perfect place and that anyone who insists otherwise is trying to sell you something. How you deal with the cognitive dissonance of $125 million Hollywood picture telling you this is up to you. At least there are no limity Snicket Happy Meals yet. End quote.
[00:54:03] Speaker B: I would have eaten a lemony Snicket Happy Meal.
[00:54:06] Speaker A: Ty Burr was on one when he wrote that review. He was salty.
Look, say what you will about The Harry Potter films, they're not great films, but the first two are not like garbage. I don't know. Anyways, Scott found us of Variety gave a negative review of the film, criticizing the the filmmaker sacrificing the storyline in favor of visual elements, saying, quote, a Series of Unfortunate Events suggests that Mary Poppins might have looked. A Series of Unfortunate Events suggests what Mary Poppins might have looked like had Tim Burton directed it. Not surprisingly, Burton's longtime production designer Rick Heinrich was responsible for the sets, while ace Emmanuel Lubezki Burton Sleepy Hollow contributed the expressionistic lighting schemes. End quote. And then finally, Roger Ebert gave the film a mixed review, saying, Jim Carrey is over the top as Count Olaf, but I suppose a character named Count Olaf is over the top by definition. I liked the film, but I'll tell you what, I think this one is a tune up for the series, a trial one in which they figure out what works and what needs to be tweaked. The original Spider man was a disappointment, but the same team came back and made Spider Man 2 the best superhero movie ever made. Made, end quote. Unfortunately, A Series of Unfortunate Events would.
[00:55:24] Speaker B: Not get that opportunity not to be. Yeah, I was trying to find a concrete answer for why they did not make, I think, more of the films. And yeah, it came down. It seems like it boils down to money and studio pains and.
[00:55:41] Speaker A: And also, like, I remember nobody was like, super, which reflected in the box office. But people weren't like, loving this movie when it came out. I feel like a lot of the book readers were like, it's not. It's not as much like the books. It's too. There's too many changes. And then people who hadn't read the books, I think were like. Because, like, myself, I had not read the books and I saw this movie, I think I was like, it's. I don't get it. Like, I think I was like, maybe it's like, hard to digest in a movie. I don't know. I bet I will enjoy it this time anyways.
[00:56:11] Speaker B: I remember, I was going to say, I remember at that time being kind of put off by the fact that they had jammed the first three books into one movie.
[00:56:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:21] Speaker B: Which in retrospect was probably the right choice because there's no way you can make a 13 movie series.
[00:56:29] Speaker A: Right. You would need to combine them in some. In some ways.
[00:56:32] Speaker B: Yeah. In some fashion. This is one of those that, like, you know, something like a Netflix series was always the correct choice for how to adapt this.
[00:56:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And it happened. There you go. As always, you can head over to Facebook, Twitter, not Twitter, Facebook threads, Instagram, Goodreads, Blue sky, wherever else we are, follow us, interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about our episodes and all that good stuff. You can head over to Apple Podcast, Spotify, writers reviews, and you can support us at
[email protected] thisfilmislit this was if you support us for 5 bucks, not 5, 15 bucks a month or more, you get access to priority recommendations. And this one was a priority patron.
[00:57:14] Speaker B: Request from Kelly Napier.
[00:57:16] Speaker A: Thank you, Kelly Napier. Katie, where can people watch A Series of Unfortunate Events?
[00:57:22] Speaker B: Well, as always, you can check with your local library or a local video rental store if you still have one. Our local library does have a copy of this on dvd, so I may just do that because you can, you can stream this with a subscription.
Not anywhere huge.
It kind of. It's on Hoopla and Pluto TV and Paramount plus. So if you have any of those, you can stream this. Otherwise you can rent it for around 4 bucks from Apple TV, YouTube, Fandango at home or Spectrum.
[00:57:57] Speaker A: So it's not on Prime. Interesting.
[00:57:59] Speaker B: Not according to what I saw.
[00:58:01] Speaker A: And that happens sometimes with certain things that are on specific platforms or whatever.
[00:58:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:06] Speaker A: Okay, cool. Yeah, like I was getting into earlier, I'm actually, I'm excited to watch this. This one, this time because I saw it when it came out.
I remember feeling wildly indifferent. Like nothing.
[00:58:19] Speaker B: I remember almost nothing.
[00:58:20] Speaker A: That's what I mean. Like, I, I remember nothing about it and I remember not having strong feelings. One, like, I don't remember not hating it or liking it. I just like it was a movie I saw in like 2004 or whatever when it came out. Enjoyed the series when we watched it on Netflix.
[00:58:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought the Netflix series was. Was great.
[00:58:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I thought the series was really good.
Again, it had some moments where it kind of like got a little tedious or whatever. I didn't love the whole thing the entire way through. I didn't think it was a masterpiece or anything, but I enjoyed it. So I'm very interested to watch the movie again now. Having more of a. Because again, when I saw the movie the first time, I had no reference point for what this was at all.
[00:59:00] Speaker B: No context.
[00:59:00] Speaker A: No context for what kind of story it was or the type of storytelling it was doing. And I was, you know, I was 16 when it came out, when I saw it, probably. So I'm sure I was like, not good at that, watching movies that weren't what I expected. Yeah, I think a lot of people aren't good at that, even as adults. But, like, I've worked a lot to become a lot better at, like, meeting a movie where it's at, you know, and contextually understanding what the movie is trying to do and not just immediately being like, what the fuck is this? And so I'm very. And especially having watched the TV show now, I think it'll be very interesting and having you being able to compare it to the books. Because when we watched the TV show, you had been so long since you read the books.
[00:59:43] Speaker B: When we watched the TV show, yeah, that first chunk where I had read the books, there was a lot of stuff that I was like, oh, my gosh. I remember this.
But like I said, I never finished the series. So even that, I was kind of like, when we got to a certain point, I was like, yeah, I don't know.
[01:00:01] Speaker A: Like I said, I'm gonna be very interested, though, to see how it kind of compares to the book and how much of the spirit of the movie. And then also we'll be able to kind of what we can remember the TV show and, like, kind of how that compares, I think will be interesting.
[01:00:13] Speaker B: So, yeah. Cool.
[01:00:14] Speaker A: That's it for this prequel episode. Thank you all for joining us. Make sure you come back in one week's time. We're talking about A Series of Unfortunate Events. Until that time, guys, gals, not binary pals. And everybody else, keep reading books, keep watching movies, and keep being awesome.
