The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Somehow I've become a dude who has watched four or five different adaptations of Sleepy Hollow, now. A lot of them feel like they exist in the shadow of the stellar Disney short, but this one ends up something special.

It's much more a period piece. Harvard educated Ichabod Crane arrives at the podunk farm town of Sleepy Hollow. We're in the shadow of The Revolutionary War, and many of the older folk associate Ichabod's demeanor with that of the enemy. But they need a teacher and he's the only applicant. Even though the pay isn't to Ichabod's liking, he soon finds his education affords him a strange power over some folk in Sleepy Hollow, and thus everybody is forced to settle with what they're given, for better and worse.

I appreciate how genuinely three-dimensional these characters feel. Again, a lot of adaptations kind of exist in the simplicity of the Disney version, but here you really get the sense that everything is part of a larger tapestry. Katrina Van Tassel is planning for the future, which for Brom Bones means settling down and starting a family -- but Katrina wants to travel, something Ichabod taps into with his stories of far off lands he's read about in books. Everybody's got something going on.

Shoutouts to this movie also making the story of the Headless Horseman feel like a proper ghost story. A lot of them either go way too overboard with making the Horseman feel like this larger than life presence that dominates the whole story, or they just assume he's naturally scary on his own and don't do anything interesting with him. Here, the tale of the horseman is given just enough dues to make it creepy without casting its shadow over the whole movie. You know it's coming, you know this story, but our characters are given a lot of breathing room around the headless horseman to let it simmer in the background.

And, just, good performances, too. A lot of these folks aren't Academy Award winning actors or anything but they fill their roles very well. Rachelle Lefevre gives a great sassy bite to Katrina, Paul Lemelin's Brom Bones is a warm-hearted rogue. Brent Carver as Ichabod Crane channels that same kind of silly infatuation with "class" that you'd get out of Frasier and Niles Crane. He's a dork, but in a certain world, he is king of the dorks.

Really, though, this is a made-for-TV movie, and eventually that catches up with it in the end. Ichabod's ride home after Katrina's harvest party wants to be spooky, but its full of limp action and cheap effects.

It gets so close, but the flat ending really shakes how enjoyable the lead up is.

Another poster here said that he'd rather watch Tim Burton's version, but that just goes to show that most movie-goers aren't interested in a true adaptation of a classic novel. This version, unlike Burton's version, is very true to the story. Meaning, instead of a strange plot involving witches, it revolves around Ichabod Crane and his awkward, generally unlikeable persona. It was pretty funny at certain times. Brent Carver stole the movie acting wise, while the guy who played Brom was pretty dull and lifeless throughout. The only real problem I had with the movie was the general lack of a empathetic character. Crane is, like I've said, awkward, but he's also pompous and his motivations are never clear. Brom is your typical no-brains jock stereotype. Katrina is even more confusing. Mostly watch this movie for the comedic value, because there's no real horror here. If you're into the butchering of a literary classic, though, please, by all means, rent Tim Burton's version.

I'll warn you that, in some cases, when motion pictures tread into the territory of faithful adaptations, the modern day audience will find the result slow, but in this case, not altogether ponderous. In order to enjoy this film fully, I would recommend that you go back to the original novel, and read it's wonderfully descriptive characters and carefully crafted New England world of spooky surroundings. Washington Irving's masterful work has been carefully reproduced here, but in doing so, the producers have painted a very rich and colorful world that lacks that ever so intangible spark that gives a motion picture good pacing and story appeal. I'll give it an eight simply because they made such an energetic effort to remain true to Irving's vision. Despite its strictly bookish feel, this film is worth an evening with the kids curled around Mom, Dad, the TV, and an explanation of why this version doesn't bleed all over the couch.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1999): Not to be confused with the marvelous Tim Burton film that was released the same year, this version (produced for Canadian television) is, at best, a tepid adaptation of Washington Irving's classic story. Unlike the Burton and little-seen Jeff Goldblum versions, which both utilized different takes on the plot, this small-budget translation literally goes by the book, yet it suffers greatly from trying to stretch out the short source material to feature length. The results are incredibly slow pacing and lack of zest throughout, right up to the unspectacular representation of the Headless Horseman. Brent Carver and Rachelle Lefevre deliver as Ichabod Crane and Katrina Van Tassel, respectively, but babyfaced Paul Lemelin is miscast in the role of roughneck Brom Bones. The film's erroneous opinion of itself states that it "captures the mystery and romance that have eluded other screen efforts." Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. 5/10

This film is more faithful to the original Washington Irving story that the Tim Burton movie, but this doesn't make it necessarily more entertaining. In fact, this movie is pretty dull. The unknown actor portraying Ichabod Crane doesn't help a lot, either. (Other actors in the movie are more appealing). Still, if you have read the book, you might be interested to watch this version.