Paramount Pictures released Sleepy Hollow on 19 November 1999. It premiered at Mann’s Chinese Theatre two days before for all the Beautiful People.

I quite like the film. It features a very clever story and a well-constructed screenplay. And it looks good — with Tim Burton’s style but without dominating the way it usually does. Finally, it features an amazing cast.

At this point, not a lot of people have read “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” It is a clever story. But it features terrible characters. There really isn’t much in it to make for a good movie. Except, of course, the legend itself.

I think I like the film Sleepy Hollow because all it takes from the story is the legend. None of the characters are the same. Ichabod Crane is now a big city constable with very modern ideas about his job. Katrina is the same as she is in the book except that the screenwriters have given her a personality. Brom is barely in the film.

Unlike the story, the film is not just a single (but good) joke. Even better, it abandons the materialist bent of the story. In fact, the rationalist Ichabod slowly comes to accept the supernatural. That is the film’s main arc.

My mother was a big reader. She was reading all the time. And the whole family went to see any movie based on those books. Mom was rarely happy with the films. Most readers aren’t! But most readers are wrong. Few novels make good movies without a lot of changes. (Short stories have similar, if different, problems.)

Burton is good enough (or powerful enough) to avoid this. He did the same thing with his later Alice in Wonderland. It didn’t especially like it. But I don’t especially like any film based on that book. He came closer to cracking it as anyone else.

Let’s celebrate the 26th anniversary of its release by watching Sleepy Hollow now!

---

Sleepy Hollow (1999) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.