While hunting, Rip Van Winkle - The Sleepy Dutchman, meets some strange little men in the Catskill Mountains. Their elixir makes him go to sleep before 1776 and he wakes up twenty years later, after the American War of Independence is over. With his rusted gun and a foot-long beard, no one recognizes him when he returns to the village. Finally, old Peter Vanderdonk realizes who he is. Rip gets reacquainted with his remaining friends, his grown son...