The Coen brothers regular plays a delusional ex-librarian who goes questing on a motorbike and sidecar in this good-natured retelling of the classic adventure
Set in the present day, in some
American backwoods town where the accents have a softly southern cadence, this likable effort reworks Miguel de Cervantes’s immortal much-adapted novel with veteran character
Actor and Coen brothers regular Tim Blake Nelson in the title role. It is written and directed by Chris Poche, at the helm for the first time after writing duties on an assortment of animated features including Hoodwinked and Over the Hedge. Poche’s iteration of Quixote imagines the hero, Danny Kehoe, as an unemployed ex-librarian living with his niece Janelle (Ann Mahoney). He is delusional and disturbed rather than, as other versions have posited, having dementia.
As Kehoe burrows deeper into his fantasy world, he becomes convinced he is a medieval knight, and, while battling a dragon (here, an oilwell pump instead of a windmill), he befriends a young, similarly unemployed man named Kevin (played by sometime Spider-Man sidekick and ace straight man Jacob Batalon). Redubbing Kevin “Sancho” and promising to pay him eventually – though perhaps only in glory rather than “lucre” – Kehoe sets forth on a stolen vintage motorcycle with sidecar – a vehicle the knight names “Rosacea”.