Cutaways, Take 2

Some random thoughts on two recent so-called "popcorn" movies I've seen recently:

Among the executive producers of "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" is Barry Sonnenfeld, who had the directing helm on the "Addams Family" flicks, and his form-over-content aesthetic of those movies is fully evident here. "Unfortunate Events" looks terrific, thanks chiefly to the richly macabre cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki (who performed a similar miracle in 1999's "Sleepy Hollow") but it is yet another tale of Hollywood coasting along with no discernible story to tell and nothing much else to say.

Based on the series of children's books by Lemony Snicket (actually the alter ego of novelist Daniel Handler), the episodic tale follows the travails of the orphaned Baudelaire children who are shuffled among relatives alternately evil, crazy or saintly. What it really seems to be about is eye-popping production design and another opportunity for Jim Carrey to mug for the camera. Carrey is always fun to watch, and his manic bit here can be entertaining, but as villainous thespian Count Olaf, he isn't content to just chew on the scenery, he digests it, excretes it all over the screen and uses it to fertilize the pretty flowers. As a result, the film's other gifted comedic actors -- Catherine O'Hara, Jennifer Coolidge, Luis Guzman, Cedric the Entertainer, even Meryl Streep -- have little room to do much of anything (although Streep gets to be "dithering," which I guess is something). One running gag in particular uses irreverent subtitles on screen to interpret the babblings of the youngest Baudelaire child, and it is an excruciating embarrassment. I defer to critic Lou Lumenick's assessment of things in the New York Post.

***

More successful, but even more ludicrous, is "National Treasure." Directed by Jon Turteltaub (who also made the underrated "Disney's The Kid"), this shaggy-dog yarn follows a geeky American history scholar/treasure seeker (Nicolas Cage, sporting some mighty Elvis-like sideburns) and geeky but witty sidekick (Justin Bartha) hunting down a lot of far-flung gibberish about Masons, the Knights Templar, Benjamin Franklin's "Silence Dogood" letters and an invisible map on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

Contrivances abound. This is the sort of movie in which the heroes and bad guys apparently have epiphanies at the exact same moment, thereby ending up at the same place all the time. Roger Ebert suggests in his Chicago Sun-Times review -- and not inaccurately -- that the movie "is so silly that the Monty Python version could use the same screenplay, line for line."

But here's the kicker: "National Treasure" is still a hoot. It's harmless dumb fun, absurd and goofy and a decent kids' adventure story ideal for a weekend matinee.

***

Oh, and lookee: the American Film Institute has its Top 10 flicks of 2004. Finally, someone gives "Maria Full of Grace" its due.