# Sleepy Hollow (1999)

### reviewed by
Jerry Saravia

An elderly man sits in a carriage at night, watching the silhouetted trees in the darkness and hearing strange noises. Suddenly, something dashes through his carriage and the driver's head is gone. The man is scared and leaps out of the carriage. He walks up to a scarecrow with an ominous, eerie pumpkin for a head. He hears a noise, turns around and his head is lopped off too. A nice start, but what a shame that the whole movie is like that - it makes decapitation seem as matter-of-factly as those "Friday the 13th" movies. We have come a long way since Disney's scarily amusing classic short, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

Back at Sleepy Hollow, a dreary town saturated in fog, the bland, easily bewitched constable Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) arrives from New York City to investigate a series of puzzling decapitations. Puzzling to Ichabod, but not to the townspeople who are certain that a supernatural figure on a horse, known as the Headless Horseman, is responsible for the murders. "We have murders in New York without benefit of ghouls or goblins," mutters Ichabod, in one of the movie's few clever lines. Eventually, Ichabod discovers that this superstition is fact, but the reasons for the Headless Horseman's rampage may leave viewers wishing that director Tim Burton would have had the demonic imagination to reinvent this fable with more juice than is allowed.

"Sleepy Hollow's" ad campaign is absolutely correct - heads do roll but with little pretense or justification. We see the nocturnal horseman galloping through the narrow roads raising his sword and axe with all his might and severing each and every head (he even battles Ichabod in a duel that had me laughing unintentionally). You see a decapitation once and it is threatening, albeit somewhat scary. Second time is still thrilling with the music score by Danny Elfman pumping through the speakers even louder. The third and fourth time, you are left wondering if Tim Burton did nothing more than create a big-budget slasher film with a headless Jason Voorhees!

Mr. Burton leaves little to the imagination, an ironic gesture on his part since he is a man borne of vivid imaginings. Remember the wonderful creation of Johnny Depp's sad-eyed, clownish, fragile Edward Scissorhands! The wondrous surrealism of "Pee Wee's Big Adventure"! The comical belching of Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice! And what do we have in "Sleepy Hollow"? An angry, elliptical horseman who huffs and puffs and not much else (oh, yes, he loves to steal heads). This may be because the monster is from Washington Irving's novella, not an original creation of Burton's.

The other characters are barely magnified beyond paper-thin caricature types. Johnny Depp is not as wild-eyed as he was in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," but his Ichabod is too bland and not eccentric enough to stimulate interest. Christina Ricci is the blonde-curled Katrina whom Ichabod falls in love with (Winona Ryder was also mistakenly blonde in "Edward Scissorhands"), but they don't have an iota of chemistry. Ricci is supposed to be some kind of witch but the script glosses over this characteristic in favor of more beheadings. The other actors show up merely as window dressing - Michael Gambon, Miranda Richardson and Michael Gough appear like blocks of wood in Burton's world with no sense of urgency. In fact, if this horseman is so dangerous and people are so afraid of him, why don't they all move to another town? Or is there a conspiracy involving an inheritance and doomed love? We can never be sure.

"Sleepy Hollow" is both sleep-inducing and hollow, showing us nothing more than numerous beheadings and bleeding tree trunks. Save for Christopher Walken's frightening cameo, beautifully captivating cinematography, and a couple of dazzling dream sequences, this Gothic wannabe fable is charmless, joyless, frenetic junk. It is time Burton sets his eyes on the vivid, imaginative power of his own creations.

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E-mail me with any questions, concerns or complaints at jerry@movieluver.com or at Faust667@aol.com

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