Christina Ricci and Johnny Depp as Katrina Van Tassel and Ichabod Crane

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Sleepy Hollow seems to have gone through this panicked post-production mill. The poor sound engineer was ordered to "turn up those damned horse hooves" and, sadly, what a committee of producers thought would be a hell-raising roller coaster turns out to be a squeaky dime-store kiddy ride with an earth-rocking sound system.

In this incarnation of Sleepy Hollow there's no gangly, big-nosed Ichabod Crane of the Washington Irving story but the decidedly dashing, prim-nosed Ichabod of Johnny Depp.

While the Ichabod of the original story was a goofy country teacher who was superstitious and a sucker for a tall-tale, this Ichabod is a skeptical New York constable with principles. He can't stand for the barbaric treatment of criminals, and he wants to implement his scientific approach to criminology using his homebrewed forensic gadgets. The higher ups in the city have no patience with him and ship him off to Sleepy Hollow where there have been three decapitations in a fortnight. Off he goes. It's here that his methods will be tested.

He arrives in a town under siege. He's a rationalist – he's sure there's an explanation for this headless horseman he's told about, but the townspeople are equally sure that there's truly an avenger out there without a cranium ... somewhere. Young Ichabod's rationalist beliefs are tested further when he discovers that the alluring girl, Katrina Van Tassel (Christina Ricci), daughter of the richest man in town, practices witchcraft. The story is basically how these two forces – the scientific world that's Ichabod's and the supernatural of love interest Katrina's – collide.

This might sound kind of heady, but it's not. And, it's not some academic excursion that fouls up the tale. Its problem is that its tone, its feel, are so wobbly and inconsistent, that you get lost.

First it aims to be an action-packed gore fest. But the lopped-off heads pile up so quickly and we see so much of the Headless Horseman so early that the thrill wears off and the unintentional laughs creep in.

Not funny, not scary, and no sweaty sex scenes – the movie ultimately falls flat. Since Tim Burton directs it, you assume that this is all supposed to be played for laughs, but you're never really sure.

Johnny Depp's performance sometimes hits the engaging, quirky strangeness of his other Tim Burton collaborations (Edward Scissor Hands and Ed Wood), but most of the time he just looks tired. Ichabod is supposed to be a big-time coward and this is where the funniest bits come from. But too often this cowardice is shoved aside and all we get is Depp's version of the Buster Keaton dead-pan mask which sometimes can read odd and funny, but in this case, backed up by a decidedly straight score by Danny Elfman, comes across bored.

The strongest performances come from the town elders. Richard Griffiths stands out as the drunken town magistrate, as does Michael Gough as the dissolute Notary Hardenbrook. Christina Ricci looked confused and fumbled through the weak period accent. Casper Van Dien was a useless pretty face whose part as Brom, Katrina's jealous boyfriend, seemed to have been mostly cut out of the movie.

You'd think there'd be a problem with a movie that wraps things up with a long speech by the villain full-up with flashbacks to earlier scenes to explain all those loose ends but, then again, you can do anything if the movie is funny and entertaining. Unfortunately, Sleepy Hollow doesn't pull off that trick.