The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
Warner Bros. | Release Date: April 10, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
13
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Village VoiceBilge EbiriMay 24, 2018
It is an uncompromising work that will make many viewers frustrated and even furious. I adored pretty much every single glorious, gorgeous goddamn minute of it. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoApr 10, 2019
Witty, goofy, and glorious, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is Terry Gilliam’s best film in two decades. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 9, 2019
Of course, Gilliam’s quest to make his Don Quixote film mirrors the original novel, and the movie he finally made is like a funhouse mirror version — filled with wonderfully, sometimes disturbingly strange imagery as tragedy meets comedy meets romance meets the noble glory of the artist sacrificing nearly everything in the quest to make lasting art. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottApr 18, 2019
Has moments of slackness and chaos (the book does, too), but for the most part it’s a lively, charming excursion. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneDavid FearApr 17, 2019
The movie nearly killed him (Gilliam). Yet the victory isn’t just that he finished it, but that he’s fashioned something so magnificent in its messiness. He should be proud as well as relieved. The impossible dream is dead. But long live The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenApr 9, 2019
And so while Gilliam has undoubtedly made better films and certainly greater films than The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, there is something about the ridiculous effort and mixed results that make this arguably the most Gilliam-esque. For anyone struggling with whether to give up, concerned that the result will not match the effort, Gilliam seems to be planting a flag — or more accurately charging a windmill — to say the effort is the reward. Read full review
70
IGNRafael MotamayorOct 10, 2018
Does The Man Who Killed Don Quixote live up to the anticipation built by a nearly 30 year-long wait? Probably not. Is it still a film worth seeing, with something to say about following your dreams and being a filmmaker, with meta commentary about its own production? It’s hard not to say yes, if only to witness a man’s decades-long obsession finally bear fruit. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeOct 4, 2018
While an extended sequence set in a Holy Week festival at a baroque Spanish castle does provide some flashes of that old Gilliam magic, mostly this is just a warmed-over Fellini rehash. Read full review
67
IndieWireEric KohnMay 18, 2018
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote sits alongside much of Gilliam’s late period work as a messy but singular achievement that strains to make its disparate parts fit together, but there’s a noble spirit of invention to its wackiness anyway. Read full review
67
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 18, 2018
It is certainly too long and too messy, too indulgent in some parts and too starved in others to be an unqualified success. But the surprise of it is that there are times, like the inspired first act, when it really does work, when it seems to have a kind of manic energy, a sheer joy at existing, which certainly makes it a far more engaging picture than Gilliam’s last. Read full review
65
The AtlanticDavid SimsApr 19, 2019
The creative journey, and the magical bond between artist and subject, are what ignite Gilliam’s passion here. Unfortunately, the themes of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote are more compelling than the set pieces themselves. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 4, 2019
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is an absolute must-see for Gilliam fans and “film that never was” buffs. It’s a picture that crossed into legend long before it was actually, fully and completely in the can. Read full review
60
EmpireIan FreerJan 27, 2020
Neither a splendid phoenix from the ashes nor a complete failure, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is erratic, occasionally inspired, occasionally dull, but shot through with a grandiose sense of ambition. Plus, Driver and Pryce add some magic along the way. Read full review
60
Time OutJoseph WalshMay 24, 2018
Inventive and anarchic, but by no means Gilliam’s masterpiece, Quixote reminds us of the romantic ideal that the world needs dreamers who dare to defy convention. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 21, 2018
To call the movie a mess would be to state the obvious and perhaps miss the point. The movie’s sense of moment-to-moment chaos — madcap scenes of bellowing, falling, tumbling and general agitating — is scarcely accidental. It is, on the contrary, very deliberately achieved. Read full review
60
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 19, 2018
Even when the film feels like a circuitous, effortful mess, it’s often an intentional one – and for everything in the film that doesn’t quite connect, that element of self-portraiture, with the artist as sap, strikes a wistful chord. Read full review
58
The Film StageJordan RaupApr 8, 2019
The entire saga of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is compelling in showing the burden that journey can take, even if the end results don’t make for Gilliam’s finest hour (or two). Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerMay 8, 2019
This is Gilliam at his most Gilliam, and that's fine, but there's nothing left to say. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyApr 12, 2019
With Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce now in the roles once occupied by Johnny Depp and the late Jean Rochefort, Don Quixote turns out to be a pretty typical Gilliam film: whimsically daffy, frantically overstuffed, and art-directed to within in an inch of its life. It’s often transporting, but even more often exhausting. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 18, 2018
Despite how personally the filmmaker connects with this ambitious riff on the Cervantes novel, the long-time passion project succumbs to the same indulgences and weaknesses that have plagued his recent movies. Read full review
42
Original-CinLiam LaceyApr 9, 2019
Apart from the relief of seeing a conclusion to a long story, there’s scant pleasure to be found in the long-winded and jumbled The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Simran HansFeb 2, 2020
It’d be easy to map Gilliam on to Grisoni, a film-maker dogged by his artistic misfires and the mess left in their wake. Really, though, he’s Quixote, stuck in a noble past and wilfully disconnected from a present that jostles uncomfortably close. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaJun 5, 2018
The experience of watching it, especially given its dreamlike unreality and head-scratching punnery (this is a deeply unfunny movie) is like listening to a doddering old man for whom every story — about art, politics, local goings on — ends up being about how every woman is an evil witch that can’t be trusted. Read full review
40
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 18, 2018
If anything, it’s what the director’s fans most feared: a lumbering, confused, and cacophonous mess Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 18, 2018
Large-scale filmmaking of this kind to some degree is probably always an adventurer's folly, with an unhinged visionary tilting at windmills in a valiant quest to tame fantasy and reality into companionable travelers that will live forever. But rarely have such brave deeds yielded so meager a reward. Read full review
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