Astoundingly Overrated

Rating: 4/10 (6 April 2004)

The original review I had planned for this movie was perhaps a little over-harsh, so I'll preface with the good: Sleepy Hollow is a perfectly acceptable beer-and-pizza or sleepover movie, the kind you watch with a good group of people when the mood is light and no-one's really focusing on the movie. The visual elements are beautiful, and it is kinda fun, in parts. But horror, my friends, it is not. I made the mistake of watching it expecting something to shiver at with all the lights off. If this is your intention, send me a personal message and I'll offer you a list of alternate recommendations. (That's a serious offer, by the way. True horror fans deserve better.) Now my complaints, complete with SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS Why bother even making a movie "based" on a classic story if you're not even going to attempt to stay true to the sense, feel, tone, or theme of the original? Listen carefully between the lines of ill-written dialogue and you'll hear the slow churn of Washington Irving rolling over in his grave. I will even accept the Big-City Detective bit, but... Ricci drawing warding-hexes around the bed? Come, now. Not only is there nothing even vaguely like this in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", but it's historical BUNK. I don't care what neo-pagan axe you have to grind, but in the 18th century, "witchcraft" meant selling your soul to the Devil in exchange for diabolical powers; this whole fluffy white-witch goddess-worship "an'-it-harm-none" approach to witchcraft dates back, historically, about as far as the British Invasion. (Parties interested in real old-school pagan practices are referred to James Frazer's "The Golden Bough", if you don't believe me.) This creates such a discordant element thrown into the context of the film that the very framework of the Sleepy Hollow legend is shattered. So we wind up with a totally different story altogether. If that was Burton's idea, I wish he'd warned us in advance. Also, I wish he'd come up with a better story than the rather pedestrian one witnessed here. And he might as well have dropped the Irving pretensions altogether. And, at any rate, the movie isn't scary. Not once. Not at all. The warped tree came close, but was more than counterbalanced by the laughable effect of the Hessian's farce-comedy bellowing. And finally, yes, I too wanted Christina Ricci for Christmas, but God clearly never meant her to be a blonde.