SLEEPY HOLLOW
Plenty good, but could've been better

  It has always been with a chuckle and a shake of the head that I greet (perplexingly frequent) comments by people that Tim Burton is some sort of "dark" director.  Really, I don't know what they're talking about ? Burton's films are, visually, almost cheesily colorful, and thematically, they tend to be chipper to a fault.  Okay, a couple of them look darker than others (such as his best, Ed Wood, or the he-didn't-direct-it-anyway The Nightmare Before Christmas).  But most of this reputation appears to sit upon the scrawny shoulders of the two Batman films, which are hokey, ugly, and so cheap-looking I think Burton walked off with half the budget (probably hid it in his hair).  I find them about as "dark" two episodes of Ally McBeal.

Still, there's never been much doubt about the man's potential.  I've wondered what a Burton-helmed horror movie might be like; not a jokey, late-90's kind of horror movie, but a serious scare flick designed to turn the blood cold.  I was pretty sure that it would LOOK good, if he put his head in the right place for it (read: NOT NOT NOT in Mars Attacks! mode).  But would it feel right?

I also worried about the script.  To say that Burton doesn't know how to pick good scripts is perhaps not quite enough to make the point - based on the overwhelming bulk of his past output, Burton wouldn't know a good script from a soup can label.  This is the major handicap which has kept him from being a more respected - and (gasp) popular - filmmaker.

Sleepy Hollow, only "inspired" by the Washington Irving tale, is credited to Andrew Kevin "Seven" Walker.  This gives one hope in the first place - Walker is kind of klutzy when it comes to plot, but he crafts some vivid characters and situations - but one has to keep in mind that this is, after all, Andrew Kevin "Brainscan" Walker.  Kevin Yagher also gets some writing credit, his first.  And to tell ya the truth, dialogue like "I think there's some witch in you." "What makes you say that?" "Because you've bewitched me!" sends me reaching for my Discman.

The trailer gave similar cause for both hope and pause.  It looked suitably dark, Depp (who can work wonders with a good role but never brings anything at all to the bad ones) looked totally in his element with weird, magnifying-lens headgear that somehow looked completely normal (even though his delivery has never been more stilted), and it all looked like a festival of fog n' gloom.  But the headless horseman suffered from acute CGI-itis (despite being played by Christopher Walken - from the neck down, I could only assume). And Christina Ricci - a fine actress with the right material (The Opposite Of Sex), but like fingernails on a blackboard without (200 Cigarettes) (she's like an aggressive Johnny Depp in this fashion) - gave me "she's gonna be this movie's Jar-Jar Binks" vibes.

Still, with my teeth gritted, hoping for the best, praying for it not to be the worst, and not really knowing what to expect, I slapped down my cash and took in this year's headless-horseman extravaganza.  And while it wasn't everything I'd hoped it would be, it's a fine film which is probably Burton's most enjoyable other than Ed Wood.

Depp of course stars as Ichabod Crane, a mild-mannered, prim and proper New York constable (wasn't he a schoolmaster in the story?) who is sent to Sleepy Hollow by a magistrate tired of his calls for reform (Christopher Lee!).  (Crane makes some statement about how a new millennium is dawning on us, even though the film is set in 1799 when his great-grandchildren are unlikely to see it) Seems there's an epidemic of decapitation murders in Sleepy Hollow, where the heads aren't just severed, but they're not even found.  And the townsfolk, who don't appear to much like outsiders (except for the blonde Katrina, played by Ricci), blame a ghastly fellow they call the headless horseman, because...well, it's not because he rides a headless horse.  Crane is determined to ferret out a more mundane explanation.

Sleepy Hollow is not, unfortunately, the blood-freezing horror film promised by the trailers, but it's a great-looking one with a lot of mood to match its great look, something this year's other eye-candy horror film (The Haunting) certainly didn't have much of.  Burton has clearly given it everything he has, and while (as usual) some of it should've been held back, hey, at least you know the guy's trying.

The sets and costumes are terrific, even though the outdoor scenes are occasionally too obviously bluescreened, and Danny Elfman's score is doomy without going into overkill as Elfman tends to do.  The look and feel of the film recalls both the Hammer films of old and James Whale's Frankenstein.  Yes, a young Vincent Price or Peter Cushing would be a lot more fun in the role of Crane, but, well, they're dead.

Depp does a satisfactory job, given what he has to do (basically, be upstaged by a man with no head).  As I said before, without a role rich in ideas beforehand, Depp is helpless to bring anything to it.  This film's Ichabod Crane is not all that interesting, but Depp is hardly the wooden blockhead he usually is in roles like this (Nick Of Time).  He is perhaps a too mannered for a 90's film, but it's kind of refreshing to see somebody willing to try that.

Ricci, however, is just awful as Katrina, completely lost in a "damsel in distress" role which I very much doubt she would have touched if it weren't attached to a film by an acceptably hip director like Burton.  Ricci's acting personality revolves not around charm but an anti-charm, and in a role that calls for charm, she's useless.  It doesn't help that she (still) looks like a (blonde!) ten year old with a boobjob, making the romance with a character played by 36-year-old Depp seem downright grotesque.

Casper Van Dien does just what you'd expect as Katrina's snugglebunny, acting snotty and jealous to the best degree he can manage.  And I have to admit to some disappointment about Christopher Walken, who plays the horseman in his minimal screen time with a head (and some of it without, I understand).  Really, every line he has in this movie is basically one word: "Ahhr!"  But the rest of the cast is wonderful, particularly Jeffrey Jones as the town reverend who presumably has a secret or two of his own.

This is Burton's only R-rated film other than (surprise!) Ed Wood, and yeah, it can be gruesome.  I don't think I've seen this many on-screen decapitations since...uh...well, certainly not in The 13th Warrior, where I couldn't see anything anyway.  The violence and grue is used in a nice spot between the chilling and the perilously close to hilarious (like when one head is severed, spins a bit on the neck before tumbling to the ground, rolls down between our hero's legs in a sick tribute to Re-Animator, and then is speared on the end of the horseman's sword like an olive on a toothpick just before he rides off).  It doesn't go all the way over into camp (phew! - so many of Burton's films give the impression of him jumping around shouting out "Look at me, I'm being campy campy campy campy campy!"), and just touches it enough to give the chill a wickedly entertaining edge.

Still, one wishes that Burton had restrained himself from foolishly indulging in occasional silliness.  There's a stupid scene where Crane is frightened by a spider into leaping up onto a chair, and it's quite embarrassing to watch Crane's frightened, supposedly comic retreat into fugue after his first encounter with the genuine horseman.  What amounts to a climactic car chase was a pretty bad decision, especially when half of it is played for "Biff!  Pow"! action.  And what's with the "Calling Dr. Freud" dream sequences in which Crane sees his mother (played by Burton's wife, Dave Grohl - I mean, Lisa Marie, who like in Mars Attacks! isn't given any lines)?  They not only stop the film dead (reducing about half the audience into nervous giggles) but take far too long to make their ultimate, uh, point.

Burton still needs to learn a little about what makes a horror movie - his attempts at shocker moments produced the most profoundly apathetic reaction I've ever seen in a theatrical audience to such a thing, even moreso than was at (gasp) I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and hell if I didn't see every shocker that one had coming in advance.  But he's got the basics down right, and he's not afraid to deploy the best of his ideas.  An early scene where a lone sentry in an elevated box surrounded by stakes and torches is probably the film's best, as even the fog itself seems an intelligent enemy.

It ain't perfect, and it ain't even great.  But it's a solidly good film, and one I'm happy to recommend, especially in a year loaded up with stupid crap like Lake Placid, Stigmata, and The Bone Collector.  I just hope you see it directly in front of better people that sat behind me (who not only talked and laughed in appropriately, but went "Baaa-aaa!" when sheep appeared onscreen).

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