| 10+ Cautions: brief language, and some violence and intensity
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is the unusual tale of Violet, Klaus and Sunny, who, after the sudden death of their parents, are shifted from one eccentric distant relative to another as the evil actor Count Olaf stalks them at every turn, trying to get his hands on their immense fortune and keep them from uncovering his secret. Sometimes serious, sometimes fun, A Series of Unfortunate Events is guaranteed to be at all times a little bizarre.
2004 | Brad Silberling | 108 min Watch Trailer
Brief Language
J-hovah
G-d
G-d
d-mn
a-se
schmuck
Jeez
darn
darn
The youngest child (too young to talk, so her statements are all in subtitles) also makes a few edgy comments like, “Someone’s brain is removed,” “Someone’s been to crazy town,” and “Bite me” (she herself is known as “the Biter”).
Some Violence and Intensity
Count Olaf attempts to kill the children by, for example, trapping them in a car parked on train tracks. It is implied that he also murders another man.
The children’s parents are said to have perished in a house fire. The burnt ruins of the house are seen. The children get choked up while reading a farewell letter from their parents.
A hurricane blows up and destroys the house the children are in, almost killing them with flying debris and broken glass.
In a fairly intense scene, man-eating leeches attack the rowboat the children are in. A couple of people are said or presumed to have been eaten by the leeches.
An off-the-wall side character makes slightly gruesome paranoid statements like, “You could trip over the welcome mat and decapitate yourselves.”
A presumed “suicide note” is found from a not-positively-portrayed side character.
Sunny bites Count Olaf, merely out of dislike.
There is a startle moment with a very large snake.
Note:
An older villain demands that a fourteen year old girl marry him, though a physical relationship is not implied in the demand.
After Count Olaf falls to the ground, a ditzy woman helps him up and, in that context of that physical contact, their faces get closer and closer - she obviously attracted to him. Nothing sensual takes place, however, and this is negatively portrayed.
Count Olaf exhibits very weird behavior throughout the movie.
An evil side character dresses in split man/woman attire.
A lake is personified as being “angry and ill-humored.”
Throughout the movie, the narrator uses a word and then defines it as meaning something more specific.
A semi-pagan symbol of a pentagon with an eye in it is seen, but it belongs to the villain.
Some of the adults in the children’s lives are portrayed as idiotic, or as refusing to listen to them because they’re children.
The phrase “thick as thieves” is used metaphorically.
Count Olaf does a brief act as someone in the electric chair.
In a brief montage, one of the books shown to have been read by Klaus is Marxist Jean-Paul Sartre’s atheistic existentialist work Being and Nothingness. Nothing is made of this.
As part of the story, the narrator (who is also a fictional character) claims to be documenting the “facts” about the fictional children.
The children’s parents tell them that “there is much more good in [the world] than bad.” If taken spiritually, this is inaccurate, but if understood experientially, it is true.
The narrator claims that “every family has its secrets, doors left unopened.”
Count Olaf once uses the phrase “wax on, wax off.”
A female side character is a justice of the peace.
A mention is made of alcohol.
