Die Legende von 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.

Not as good as the Disney animated version, but much superior to both the Jeff Goldblum and Johnny Depp versions. What makes any live action adaptation of Washington Irving's classic is the choice of Ichabod Crane (The Disney version is judged based on it's narrator, Bing Crosby, who's self-mocking "hip" style, carries the story). Certainly Brent Carver dominates this role from the start when we see him perched upon a hill looking like a scarecrow, it is a startling shot by the director. In the early TV film version, Jeff Goldblum certainly looked the part, but he was too dull. In Tim Burton's spoofy version Johnny Depp (a favorite of mine, especially in Tim Burton films) is just poorly cast (as was Wednesday Adams as Katrina, give me a break puleeeze!). This version is the closest to capturing the flavor of the classic short story. If you want to see Disney's Sleepy Hollow or Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow then the choice is obvious, however, if you want to see Washington Irving's Sleepy Hollow check out this obscure cable channel version.

I thought this was the best of the "Sleepy Hollow" films that I've seen (incl. the Johnny Depp and Jeff Goldblum versions) at staying true to the original story (however, I really liked Tim Burton's version as well). Though I agree that the legend doesn't especially make for a tight 2-hour feature, this film, which I discovered accidentally on an obscure channel, was very entertaining. Brent Carver was awesome as Ichabod Crane, but the guy who played Brom Bones was a bit too "cutesie." A good choice for adults and children alike.

Fairly close adaptation of the Irving story, except for giving Katrina a personality, and Brom a sense of wanderlust, so if you liked the cartoon version or the Tim Burton movie, this one may not be for you. The cast is a bunch of people I've never heard of, but they're not bad, and the guy playing Crane is actually quite good-you're not SUPPOSED to like the character, so his annoying ways are true to the tale. I do wish that the actor playing Brom Bones was a bit more of a hellion-this guy is a bit too much the young, handsome, and high school jock type. The pacing is a bit slow, the costumes rather much like a high school drama club production (ladies of that time would not have worn pinner aprons everywhere, especially not to church-people then would have reacted to that the same way people now would react to you attending church in your bedroom slippers), and everything is a bit too anachronistic in its cleanliness and shinyness, but it's not terrible. One for the whole family, even the littles. A cut above ordinary due to the actors playing Crane and Mynheer Van Tassel, so six stars.

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.