by MATTHEW HAYS

Lost in La Mancha, the making-of feature-length documentary about a failed attempt by filmmaker Terry Gilliam to bring the book Don Quixote to the big screen, dredges up all of our worst suspicions about the business of making movies.

While the film meets up with our worst expectations, this isn't such a bad thing. Lost in La Mancha - which is also, it should be noted, one of those why-on-earth-didn't-this-movie-get-nominated-for-a-best-doc-Oscar? movies - unravels much as sensible pessimists would expect it to. Indeed, it's a bit sadistic to watch film types, including the director with a maniacal laugh, Gilliam, try desperately to cope with unending bad news and epic roadblocks as he works to make this incredibly unwieldy production actually work. The documentary's directors, Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, give us ample background to chew on. While recounting Gilliam's successes (including Time Bandits, The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys), they don't shy away from pointing out that The Adventures of Baron Munchausen went massively over budget and brought in scant box office, branding Gilliam as a difficult filmmaker with a flippant attitude towards financiers. This makes his task with The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the working title for the project, all the more difficult. As outlined in this doc, the budget (of somewhere over $30-million (U.S.)) is about half what would be expected for a Hollywood-financed film, but because of Gilliam's rep, he's had to cull his backing entirely from European sources. Everyone has their fingers crossed - then a key actor is ill, the rains wash away some equipment and a plane flies overhead as the crew attempts to get a crucial shot.

A comedy of errors that is both painful and funny, I can't comment on this movie without also equally recommending an exceptional Canadian making-of doc entitled Strangers in a Strange Land, which told the futile story of the making of Bethune. That film says as much about the Canadian film biz as any could ever expect to - and deserves as much praise as this one's getting.

Lost in La Mancha opens Friday, April 4

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