The True Don Quixote

Based on Miguel de Cervantes' bestseller El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha) this movie portrays a modern Don Quixote, a man reading to much chivalric romances, losing his mind and deciding to become a knight-errant to revive chivalry. Tim Blake Nelson did a good job playing Don Quixote. After The Ballad of Buster Scruggs where Tim Blake Nelson also delivered he plays another weirdo. Personally it isn't really my kind of humor. It might work for awhile but not for an entire movie. I'm devided about this movie, the acting was good, the vocabulary was the funniest part, but the story is a bit slow and not that really entertaining.

A neurotic loner who has raised himself on books instead of real life, loses his sense of reality and thinks he is Don Quixote - who, in Cervantes novel, thought he was a knight several hundred years to late for knighthood. The soul of the original story is present all the way. But instead of fighting windmills, this modern version lets Don fight oilpumps, and his Sancho Panza is an overweight outsider, and so forth. Things go from hilarious to embarrasing. The modern world slowly catches up in the last quarter of the movie, and he might end on antipsychotic medicine and antidepressants. But things take a turn once again. This might not be the masterpiece of the year, but it is areal good antidote to the navel-gazing paranoia that haunts many american movies and TV-shows these days. This is about accepting the weirdness of the world, so that you can live in it and with it.

Mr. Nelson's performance was amazing. The poem recited by the landlord was unexpected and charming. and the story was a hoot, How refreshing to find a movie that didn't cost millions of dollars, where no one was killed, where there was no profanity, a movie the whole family could watch. Instead of relying on special effects, they relied on creativity and talent. I loved it!

I enjoyed this film a quite a lot. It has a great deal of quirky charm whilst covering a subject of mental illness without being maudlin.

The writing is witty and at times rather funny and the characters well portrayed and very well acted.

The resemblance to the Don Quixote original story is greater than you might expect, but it's modern setting does it justice.

Overall it is a gentle ride with a good story, fine acting and some good wit.

I can't really give it a 10, and it's certainly not for a general audience - no special effects, no murders, indeed, not much of anything of note, however in that lies its charm, so it definitely deserves a seven and a half and I suspect I will watch it again, which is the very essence of a good experience.

Eccentric and hilarious while touching on heavier themes like mental illness, The True Don Quixote puts a modern spin on a classic story that will leave viewers warmed and pensive. Recommended for those who enjoy witty, ironic dialogue and the charms of discovering the extraordinary within the ordinary. (think Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Little Miss Sunshine)