Visually enrapturing adaptation heavily marred by lack of intelligence and tension in the script.

Rating: 6/10 (7 February 2009)

Beetle Juice, Batman, Batman Returns, Mars Attacks!, Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, Sweeney Todd and now Sleepy Hollow. That is the extent of my experience with Tim Burton. I don't often need to take the role of lemming upon me, but I'm left without choice.
"Sleepy Hollow" once again merely is a mask of visual creativity, unmasked however there's little pleasing about this, and every other, Burton film. The script flaunts a shocking lack of intelligence. The film's half and half divided between dark comedy and mystery, the first an instinctive like or dislike, the second an objective fail. Especially the final twist falls flat, the cliché scenes where the villain points out the exit of the plot's labyrinth in an overly long expose hardly possesses any punch due to the insufficiently explored characters (betrayal isn't much of a heart breaker when there's no real trust established to begin with), and the web of clues' only goal appears to be confusing the audience(did Burton really expect us to remember all the names of a dozen characters who've hardly registered on screen due to lack of screen time and unmemorable dialog).
Burton's rendition of 'Ichabod Crane' is not so much "some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield" (see Washington Irving's Classic Horror Story) as another self-aware, colorful for the sake of being colorful, character, though it's not hard to imagine him filled with hay(why do so many mystery films insist on selecting the dullest, most devoid of personality character as the mirror through which we view the story, rendering it less quirky?).
Elfman's score complements the pert visual style, the film's strongest suit beyond a shadow of a doubt. Opting for an almost b&w look (same as Sweeney Todd), he succeeds at injecting the blood shedding scenes with more vivacity. It's the strongest argument for why I feel Sleepy Hollow leans a lot closer towards a comic book film than a Gothic horror story adaptation.
Although I can't put my heart into recommending this film, checking out the scenes involving Christopher Walken's headless horseman may just be enough argumentation to give this movie one look.