A Series of Unfortunate Events: Laughing at Count Olaf

When I was thirteen I had only read the first two books in A Series of Unfortunate Events. I liked them, but they were a bit small and I was just about to really get out of the age range that those early books are intended for. The movie coming out felt like a way to make me more interested in the series as a whole.

But that didn’t happen. And frankly, I think it was Jim Carrey.

He looks entirely pleased with himself.

Count Olaf, in my mind, never came off as funny in those books. He was a sinister presence, a direct confrontation with the grim and dirty world that plagued the Baudelaire’s. Sure the adults failing them in sometimes idiotic ways was always humorous to a degree of silliness, but Count Olaf always refused to play into that. So getting a comedic actor to play Olaf, always felt wrong to me.

I recently reread the first two books of the series (apparently this is an inevitable curse for me) and dropped them again. This was in part because I wasn’t reading very much and because of the repetitiveness, but the point is that Count Olaf still felt like a very foreboding and awfully real to life dark figure.

So Jim Carrey didn’t work for me. Count Olaf was, frankly, ridiculous in that movie and they made unnecessary plot changes that destroyed some of the wit and pace of the books (I mean it was three books in one).

But luckily now we have the TV series, with its completely serious casting of Neil Patrick Harris.

Barney?

Well…

Okay, so I’m going to say this first: I really like the TV Series. I thought it was great and that they perfectly captured the tone of the books. But they still did not capture my mental imagination of Count Olaf. And at this point, I can’t really keep arguing for it, because Daniel Handler is basically in charge of the show.

And to be fair, what I’m wanting for Count Olaf would be no fun. No fun at all.

Count Olaf the way I read him is a nasty horrible man. And he still is, but if he quipped like Carrey or Harris I would probably like him more. Instead, when I read scenes such as him talking about post-marriage rape (essentially) in the first book, and holding a knife literally against a child’s leg in the second book, I’m not laughing.

The TV Series has done a lot else great with adaptation. But that’s for another post. Until then, just know, that if the ridiculousness of Olaf in the film adaptations so far leaves you wanting, there’s always a much more unfortunate path in the books.

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The series discussed above is available on Netflix. But, you might also be interested in seeing how such a series could be executed through the written word as well. By clicking on the image below you can purchase the first book in the series, and see if you like it.