DVD rotates inside the tray – a very bright green country home, flowers every where, butterflies twittering, a happy tune being sung in the background – title rolls. “The little Elf” I thought it was an advertisement and decide to press Fast Forward in my remote. But just as I bend to pick it up, the music goes off, everything stops as though the disc has broken into two-then Lemony Snicket’s(Jude Law) voice “If you are hoping to see this kind of a movie, then I’m sorry, it’s not.” I straighten up. This is what I was looking for.

One part of me feels very happy for having read the books – mind you, the books belong to those genre which will make sense to both a child and an adult. Countless puns and literary allusions – for instance there’s a character named Mr.Poe (Possibly after Edgar Allan Poe) and a Herpetologist named Montgomery Montgomery. But this is not about the books, it’s about the movie – the first three books have been made into a movie with obvious but ‘welcomable’ changes.

SPOILER: What I mean by ‘Welcomable’ is the fact that the first book in the series titled “The Bad Beginning” ends with Count Olaf’s (Jim Carrey) failed attempt to inherit the Baudelaire fortune by staging a play – where he marries Violet. Violet comes off by saying that she didn’t sign the marriage certificate with her ‘right’ hand and so the marriage is invalid and gets away. ingenious, but flimsy. In the movie, Klaus focuses a ray of sun on to the marriage certificate using a huge lens and causing it to burn. This was much better. The movie has such small little deviations from the book, although it stays pretty close to the original story.

Jim Carrey steals the show as Count Olaf. Evil, vicious and twisted, yes, but nevertheless he is funny. Sunny Baudelaire is being wonderfully cast. The scenes involving Klaus thinking about something he’s read, is awesome, as is the opening of the movie.

I’d give four out of five – one each for the art direction, the small deviations from the book, Jim Carrey and Sunny Baudelaire. I take that one away – half each for Violet and Klaus.