Let’s start with the good: this 1999 Tim Burton film was lensed by the now-legendary Chivo Lubezki. You may remember him for winning back-to-back-to-back Oscars for GRAVITY, BIRDMAN, and THE REVENANT. He also cinematographied the shit out of CHILDREN OF MEN, which includes boner-inducing long takes full of action and Clive Owen.
So this movie looks incredible. Or, at least, fun and interesting. Almost all the scenes are shot in a semi-monochromatic haze that suggests a foggy dawn or a foggy dusk or a particularly moonlit night (in the fog) or a visual manifestation of creeping dread. Basically it puts you in a time-swirl so day could be night or perhaps we’re all mad. It’s evocative but not subtle, but hey, this is a Tim Burton movie.
The story and the acting are hammy and uneven. The humor mostly consists of Johnny Depp being squirted in the face with gross things. His Ichabod Crane has a potentially amusing backstory that’s told in fits and starts. He was raised by a earthy, free-spirited mother but, since this is the 1700s, she ends up in being tortured in an Iron Maiden because they hated witches back then. And women. Especially women wearing cleavage-baring impractical dresses.
This leads young Ichabod to take a 180-degree turn from whimsical things and become a detective. Not just a detective, but a detective who’s going to convince his barbaric New York colleagues how to apply reason and logic to the law! Since his barbaric colleague hate him, they send him to solve the Mystery of the Headless Horseman over in po-dunk Sleepy Hollow.
So his internal conflict is, ostensibly, the battle between magic and science. As a proponent of CSI: Sherlock-style crime-fighting, he’s faced with an otherworldly, unexplainable Headless Horseman and must decide how to proceed.
Spoiler alert: it’s through pratfalls and passing out in the mud.
Other highlights include a wooden Christina Ricci in a thankless love interest role, Casper Van Dien in an even more thankless role as the local model/bully, and a 56 year-old Christopher Walken playing the almost superhuman Hessian killing machine who becomes the Headless Horseman.
Also, Johnny Depp getting squirted in the face with gross stuff.
Come for the cinematography and atmosphere, stay for the 4th beer you’re drinking that will make the limp story and hacked-together ending seem satisfying.
FADE OUT 