Swung on and Missed!

Rating: Null/10 (6 November 2003)

Aren't there movie doctors out there? Is that what an editor is supposed to do. But maybe guys like Burton are so revered that the studios can't do even the slightest fine tuning on their projects. This film just needed another set of eyes and it might have been great. But what starts out as a marvelous premise gets quickly lost in a not so scary storyline that has to resort to heavy duty gore to keep you from becoming Rip Van Winkle. Depp is great as always, as the meek but courageous police inspector Ichabod Crane who is sent upstate to investigate a series of bizarre murders. I really don't have a problem with mutating the classic tale in this case, as I said, it really looked promising. Burton serves up a wonderful feast for the eyes as far as set recreation, and mood photography. He goes for the dark look, if you can believe it. Almost every exterior shot is done in shadowy steel blues, grays and snow. So much for the Halloween angle. It doesnt snow aroud here until Thanksgiving. But again its not the typical Burton Hades cinematography, but the really dopey story which if it must be original, has to be better. I think a guy with Burtons vision would have been best off just making a Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and putting his signature stamp on it visually. His signature stamp storyline is more often than not, pretty forgetable and hardly an improvement on a literary legends work. Keep it simple Tim and people might stop laughing at you. Look for Christopher Walken as the maniacal Headless Horseman.