A Series of Unfortunate Events

Today I saw a series of unfortunate events. Not only do I refer to the movie but to the contents themselves. I actually looked forward to seeing this movie, mainly because of Jim Carey's appearance as Count Olaf (and a couple more characters as well).
Of the books I have only read the first one, and it was good. I really liked it. The movie, on the other hand, needed all te mixing and matching of unfortunate events of the first three books to give the screenplay enough movement to make the 120 minutes of film worth its time.
Jim, as always, made the movie worthwhile. The children did a good job too, in particular the twins playing Sunny, the bitter. The cast was good, including a cameo by Dustin Hoffman, but the story was deformed too much. Perhaps it's not a good book to make a movie out of. Perhaps I should have rented "The Littlest Elf" instead.