Lisa Marie in Sleepy Hollow (1999)
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Review
One of our more talented (and consistent) directors, Tim Burton, returns with another visual orgasm for everyone to pick apart because the screenplay may not exactly be Citizen Kane. Hey, guess what? It's a fairy tale! Saying a fairy tale is clichéd is like saying that sugar is too sweet. You can get all the sugar experts to back you up and you'll still sound like a big dummy.
I can picture Tim Burton running around a giant soundstage with a bag full of severed heads and a bunch of flaming pumpkins saying "OK, put that haystack over there. Yeah, next to the other 23. Um, we need 30 more fog machines over near the windmill and someone get me some more caffeine." His attention to dark, misty and misshapen detail is his strongest trait and it spills all over Sleepy Hollow and onto the floor. Watch your feet!
I used to be creeped out by the Disney animated version, mainly because "Ichabod Crane" had this horrifying Adam's Apple. Check it out, you'll see what I mean. "The Headless Horseman" was always a little silly to me, because how dangerous can a villain be when you can just turn left and hide from him? HE HAS NO HEAD! He can't see or hear you! I digress. My point is that Tim Burton's version of The Horseman is pretty damn cool. He's got a sword and a big battle-axe and he swings them all around like Jackie Chan, only he's taller then 4'10. He also has an undead stallion, cool armor and like 410 hit points. Basically, he's a tough one to kill.
"Constable Ichabod Crane" is dispatched to a small town in Northern New York known as Sleepy Hollow. It seems that there have been quite a few decapitations about, especially considering the regular beheading season doesn't start for 7 months. There he meets quite a few untrustworthy town leaders and a bodice full of cleavage played by Christina Ricci. He begins using his revolutionary pathology skills to prove the killer is human, while most evidence points to the contrary. All of his research and screwing around with corpses pays off when he brilliantly stumbles across this giant tree full of human heads. This gives him a mild clue that he may have been mistaken about his whole "the killer is a man and I will discover him" speech.
That's about as much as I'll give up, although the 'arc of the story' is not really the strongest aspect of Sleepy Hollow. That honor goes to Ms. Ricci's breasts. Kidding. It's the look. The overall visual scope of this movie is awe-inspiring. It's always dark, overcast and damp. The trees are wood skeletons and the night is always misty. This is Tim Burton's goriest movie and I don't mean that in a bad way. Many of the bloodiest scenes are also the most exciting and the sudden bursts of blood made the audience squeal even more. Every scene in Sleepy Hollow looks and feels like an illustration in an old book come to life. The characters themselves are shown in a gothic, almost cartoonish fashion, with the ridiculous wigs and huge bellies.
Although almost any praise for this movie belongs to Tim Burton, Johnny Depp again deserves recognition for his role as Crane. His pale, twitchy inspector gains more style as the movie goes on and Depp adds a few clever quirks. (If I'm not mistaken, his eyebrows suddenly shooting skyward almost seemed like a running gag.) Christina Ricci seems unexpectedly flat in this one and I don't mean flat like a boy. I mean flat like she has no idea what she's doing in this movie. She wasn't terrible but she has obviously given much stronger performances elsewhere. There is also the required stable of reliable character actors on board, such as Jeffrey Jones, Christopher Lee, Casper van Dien and the ever-professional Lisa Marie. A special nod goes to the man himself, Danny Elfman. I couldn't imagine a Tim Burton movie without his music.
Overall, a damn good time for fans of fairy tales and spooky old horror movies. Yes, there are a few sappy romance speech scenes and some superfluous plot threads but why complain? We have a great director who is obviously enjoying himself with this project. It's a fairy tale for older kids. We should be grateful it wasn't cut to shreds before we saw it.
Sleepy Hollow is right at home with Burton's best movies (Edward Scissorhands, Beetle Juice, Pee Wee's Big Adventure): A little dark, twisted and pretty smart but always with a solid sense of humor and some real love for the story. In today's Hollywood, that's worth it's weight in gold.
Nudity Report: No skin to speak of, though Lisa Marie and Christina Ricci both show a flair for displaying gothic cleavage in a few choice sequences.
IMDB Summary: 19,341 IMDb users rate this one at 7.4/10.
Box Office: Grossed just over $101 million against an estimated budget of $65 million.
DVD Info: Widescreen Anamorphic format, Full-length audio commentary by director Tim Burton, Behind-the-Scenes Featurette, Cast & Crew Interviews, theatrical trailers, photo gallery.
Written by: Scott Weinberg