Category: Legacy

This week, I watched a whole bunch of Legend of Sleepy Hollow adaptations for an upcoming episode of The Goods, including this 1999 Hallmark made-for-TV flick. (As opposed to the other 1999 Sleepy Hollow movie.)

Strictly as a movie, this is a bit slow and talky in a Masterpiece Theater sort of way. But as someone who spent the week reading and rereading the Irving short story, I really enjoyed this movie’s dedication to capturing almost all of the details of the source while fleshing out the town and the character relationships in a believable way.

Of note, Brent Carver’s take on Ichabod Crane is much less sympathetic than basically any other adaptation I’ve seen. Crane’s selfish and manipulative elements are played up so that it’s almost a relief when Katrina shuts him down.

The headless horseman chasedown itself is, unsurprisingly, a bit rote… until we get the double twist of unmasking Brom before another, presumably supernatural, headless horseman appears. It’s an odd choice for an otherwise faithful adaptation.

(The one adaptation I wanted to catch that I haven’t yet is the 1980 made-for-TV version with Jeff Goldblum as Crane. It’s hard to imagine a more perfect casting.)

Here we have two half-hour literary adaptations of beloved works, both charming and well-animated and lively, but with almost no reason to be packaged together.

Even when you’re a kid, you just know that this movie looks different from classic early Disney, even if you can’t put a finger on it:

Despite suffering through the nightmarishly bad Belle’s Magical World the previous day, my daughters were up for still more Beauty and the Beast content last night, so we streamed The Enchanted Christmas.

My girls wanted to see more Beauty and the Beast after we enjoyed the animated classic last week. So I pulled this up on Disney+ (not realizing the Christmas one is the first proper midquel).