Sleepy Hollow a review by Christian Pyle
Directed by Tim Burton Written by Andrew Kevin Walker (based on the story by Washington Irving) Starring Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Casper Van Dien, Jeffrey Jones Official Site: http://www3.sleepyhollowmovie.com/flash_intro.html Grade: C-
Nearly every film Tim Burton has directed has been an homage to the horror genre -- "Frankenweenie," "Beetlejuice," "Batman," "Edward Scissorhands," "Ed Wood," "Mars Attacks!" -- yet none of them have been horror films. "Sleepy Hollow" is his first attempt to actually scare people. I greeted the prospect with high anticipation; Burton's whole career seemed to be leading up to this. I left disappointed.
Andrew Kevin Walker's screenplay takes only the character names from the classic short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." In the movie Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) is a New York City police constable who is trying to introduce scientific methods of investigation to his superiors. Ichabod is dispatched to the small town of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of murders. Several of the town's leading citizens have been decapitated by the Headless Horseman.
Although he rejects the ghost story the town elders tell him, Ichabod finds that the facts of the case confound his scientific reasoning. He also discovers that the killings are not random, that the victims are tied together by a secret. Along the way Ichabod gets help from a bewitching (literally) young woman (Christina Ricci) and the son of one of the murder victims (Marc Pickering).
My reaction: ho-hum. The plot is an accumulation of cliches without even the slightest touch of originality to make it interesting. That in itself is forgivable; Hollywood constantly tries to sell us used products in new packages. However, Burton's attempts at inducing fright come off as goofy. It might be his background -- in his previous movies, goofy was the goal. Along the same lines, it doesn't help that creature designer (and producer) Kevin Yagher has done his best work for the tongue-in-cheek Tales From the Crypt TV series. A witch's eyes and tongue shoot out like Roger Rabbit's, a tree spurts blood like it's in a Monty Python sketch, and the Headless Horseman . . . well, he's a guy without a head . . . on a horse (boo!).
The performances are also awful. Although he's impressed me with his work in other films, Depp doesn't seem to know what to do with Ichabod, and his dialogue is hampered by stilted diction that's supposed to pass for an 18th century accent. Ricci seems to put all her effort into seeming enigmatic, which guarantees that we won't sympathize with her character. The actor who is revealed at the end to be the villain comes off as ridiculously cartoonish. The only pleasure generated by the cast comes from surprise cameos by Christopher Lee, Martin Landau, and Christopher Walken.
I wonder if this movie was originally conceived as part of Francis Ford Coppola's projected series of gothic adaptations, a series that produced only "Bram Stoker's Dracula" and "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." Coppola is an executive producer for "Sleepy Hollow," and the script reflects his interest in early forms of "moving pictures," particularly in a toy that Ichabod carries which blends two pictures to create an optical illusion. (There's a bird on one side of the card, a cage on the other. When the card is flipped rapidly, the bird appears to be caged.)
Bottom Line: The hollow isn't the only thing that's sleepy.
© 1999 Christian L. Pyle
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