I am not capable of rating _The Man Who Killed Don Quixote_. After waiting decades to see this film, I was bound to be disappointed.

I saw Peter O'Toole in _The Man of Lamancha_ on video cassette when other kids my age were watching Disney and it marked me in ways only a child be marked before experience and others force you to build up walls for protection. At my vulnerable age I didn't understand everything I was watching, but I knew what I saw and I recognised it in myself.

As I grew up, and as a fan of Monty Python, I developed a penchant for Terry Gilliam films after seeing (also on video cassette) _The Adventures of Baron Munchausen_, and later, _Brazil_ and _Twelve Monkeys_. Parallel to these cinematic adventures, in uni I read an English translation of _Don Quijote de La Mancha_ (all 900+ pages) which served to accentuate my connection to the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.

When I learned, therefore, that this director whose imagination I coveted wanted to make a film about this hero I worshipped, my expectations rose higher than a hot air balloon...before crashing to earth with the collapse of Gilliam's first excursion into Lamancha (chronicled so well in Lost in Lamancha -- a must-see documentary for anyone interested in filmmaking).

Now, finally, after years of waiting, my imposed patience was rewarded...and I could not help but be disappointed. _The Man Who Killed Don Quixote_ lacks the imagination, humor and poetry contained in every other work about Don Quixote.

But that's just me. Hopefully, those without the demands placed on me by my past will appreciate this film for what it is, and not what I dreamt it would be.