Starring: Meryl Streep, Jim Carrey, Timothy Spall, Emily Browning, Liam Akin
Directed by: Brad Silberling.

Dark brooding and sometimes susceptible to be labelled abusive to children, "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" chronicles the rather bizarre and often painfully sadistic adventures of three bright orphans who are tossed from one eccentric household to another in search of a home away from home.

Perhaps the best comment on what director Brad Silberling hopes to achieve through this acutely dark journey into the child's psyche comes from the boy Klaus (Liam Akin) who mumbles angrily about the meanness of their situation. His sister Violet (Emily Browning) wonders if Klaus means the wicked uncle who has taken them in.

"No. I mean our parents for leaving us like this," replies the boy.

Despite their dire straits the three children remain remarkably hopeful, almost upbeat, to the end, as though they knew they were puppets in the hands of creators who know how to get kids out of the crises that invades those who have no guardian angels over them.

In the way that director Silberling handles the various episodes, we see the kids being tossed through a tumult of fairytale dangers, not quite life-threatening but still menacing enough to make us bite our nails in suspense.

All the three children are delightful performers. And the infant Sunny whose gibberish is translated for us as French, is a scream-stealer.

The film's visual profile is impeccable. The characters seem to be at once fantasy figures and reality prototypes.

Parts of the children's cruel adventures are also very funny. The violence perpetrated against them is partly comic and partly sinister. Departing from both the fable-like scenario and the horror genre, the director creates a world that's done up in elaborate shades suggesting swash-buckling intrigue.

The performances, specially Jim Carrey with his amusing and alarming masquerade of villainy, seems to echo the mood of reckless adventure. Billy Connolly as an animal-loving benevolent guardian and Meryl Streep as a squeamish aunt get into the thick of things without appearing hammy - a tendency that looms large over a film which redefines the spirit of magic and adventure with a disregard for both children's and adult's cinema.