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Grade: B+

Verdict: Something gleefully wicked this way comes. (Parental note: Not recommended for under-8s.)

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
Cox News Service

We are warned early on in "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Snicket himself (voiced by Jude Law) that the movie we are about to see is extremely unpleasant. He further suggests that if we're looking for a happy ending, we'd best head for another theater, because that's just not in the cards.

Happy endings aren't what fans -- and there are legions of them -- expect from Daniel Handler's (aka Lemony Snicket) hugely popular series of books (11 and counting). He spins whimsically gothic plots -- twisted tales of death, fires, incredibly deadly serpents and flesh-eating leeches.

Much like Edward Gorey's macabre illustrations, the Lemony Snicket books are an addictive mix of the sinister and the absurd. Jim Carrey, who raises clowning to a virtuoso level, stars as Count Olaf, a distant relative of the newly orphaned Baudelaire children: 14-year-old inventor Violet (Emily Browning); her preteen brother, Klaus (Liam Aiken), who's a voracious reader with a photographic memory; and toddler Sunny (twins Kara and Shelby Hoffman), an enthusiastic biter whose subtitled gurgles and coos provide some of the movie's best laughs.

When their parents die in a mysterious house fire, the children are taken in hand by an exceedingly dim banker, Mr. Poe (Timothy Spall, looking for all the world like Mole in a production of "The Wind in the Willows"). He hands them over to Olaf, who's only interested in the kids' considerable inheritance. "Where do I sign for the fortune ... I mean, the children?" he asks.

They temporarily escape his evil clutches by being shunted off to other eccentric relatives. There's reptile-loving Uncle Monty, played with ebullience and warmth by Billy Connolly. And hyperphobic Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep, having a blast), who says things like, "Don't trip on the welcome mat and decapitate yourselves."

But Olaf always turns up, usually in a different disguise. After all, he's an actor by profession and a ham actor by inclination. (Portraits of him as Hamlet and Don Quixote hang inside his Addams Family-ish abode.)

Based on the first three Snicket books (Handler aims for 13), each episode is a morbid yet hilarious little gem. But they are episodes, which gives the movie an inescapably cyclical feeling. Nothing builds; it's just more of the same.

But what a wonderful same it is. The Hoffmans must be the most irresistible tots to grace the screen since Swee'pea in 1980's "Popeye." Browning, who has junior Angelina Jolie lips and Isabella Rossellini eyes, and Aiken, who knows exactly how smart kid brothers behave, work together beautifully. They bring the film a certain groundedness, even when it's at its most fantastical.

Which is the only word for the way the movie looks. Longtime Tim Burton collaborator Rick Heinrichs has created a uniquely creepy and perverse world where computers and cobblestone streets co-exist, an ancient Chrysler Imperial comes equipped with a remote door opener and people in stovepipe hats talk about faxes. It's Dickens by way of Roald Dahl with a sprinkling of "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

The director is Brad Silberling, whose work on "Moonlight Mile" (good) and "Casper" (bad) wouldn't lead you to expect he had this movie in him. But apparently he does — though Carrey and the set design could probably make Michael Bay look clever.

This movie's series of unfortunate events is wickedly entertaining and a fortunate addition to the holiday season. More, please — but only if Carrey comes back, too.