# Sleepy Hollow (1999)

### reviewed by
Gary Jones

    Sleepy Hollow (6/10)

Washington Irving's story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has been dusted down and given the Tim Burton treatment. Burton excels in bewitching us with bizarre, dark, yet light-hearted visions - Edward Scissorhands and the Batman films (before the series was effectively ruined when Burton gave up the helm) are wonderful movies, and the new Tim Burton movie was a must-see. The story is set in 1799, in the village of Sleepy Hollow near New York. A series of ghostly and gruesome murders has taken place in the village and Ichabod Crane, a police constable from the big city, is sent to investigate. Crane (played by Johnny Depp) soon finds that there really are some otherworldly goings-on in the village and realises that he might not succeed in his attempt to bring science and reason to the investigation and debunk the villagers' spooky tales of the butchering Headless Horseman.

The film is absolutely gorgeous to look at, the action sequences are fine and the score shows Danny Elfman on top dramatically-whimsical form, but unfortunately the movie fails owing to seriously ill-judged screenplay and performances fundamental problems which no amount of technical skill can overcome. The film is written by Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote Seven with its brilliantly novel construction, but the source material here ties Walker down to an old-fashioned ghost story, and in his attempt at producing authentic period dialogue, what we get sounds horribly forced and unconvincing.

Johnny Depp is a fine actor, but his performance here is little more than a reworking of his Edward Scissorhands, the similarity between the roles highlighted when Ichabod wields various spiky investigative gadgets. But what worked in Scissorhands strangely fails here. Perhaps Burton's talent for malignant delight works best when it plays against a contemporary background. Here it just seems a bit silly.

The murderous Headless Horseman is played, in the scenes before the horseman loses his head, by Christopher Walken, but for the bulk of the horseman's screen time, the headless figure is played by Ray Park. Park played Darth Maul in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace and as the bonceless butcher he brings a savage grace to his frequent dismemberings of Sleepy Hollow's inhabitants. Christina Ricci is usually worth watching and has a knack for taking on interesting roles, such as her parts in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and The Opposite of Sex. Here she is completely wasted, and it hard to see anything in the script that can have attracted her, so perhaps she let the attraction of working with Burton and Depp get the better of her.

The whole film seems to be a homage to Hammer horror films. (The Hammer connection is strengthened by the use of such fine British character actors as Christopher Lee, Michael Gambon and Michael Gough.) Such films can be fun to watch and I have fond memories of sneakily staying up late to watch them on TV, but even their greatest fans would find it hard to deny that they were melodramatic, overacted nonsense. In this regard, Tim Burton's film has captured their essence all too well.

All in all, Sleepy Hollow is a big disappointment.

-- Gary Jones Homepage: www.bohr.demon.co.uk PGP public key available from servers (DH/DSS key ID: 0x11EAE903)

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