PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE:Directed by Steven Sebring PG cert, limited release, 109 min **

TOO OFTEN, reviews of rock documentaries come across as assessments of the musician in question rather than the film itself.

How else can one explain the raves for Lian Lunson's recent, barely competent Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man?

That noted, let me here declare that I bow to nobody in my passion for the classic albums of Patti Smith. Horses, Waveand Easteroffer a perfect distillation of the bohemian spirit that wafted about downtown New York in the punk years.

Sadly, this insufferable documentary - though sincerely intended and suffused with passion - only serves to highlight the great sage's tendencies towards aimless verbosity and galloping self-importance.

Steven Sebring, a fashion photographer, followed Smith around for a full 11 years, but can't have spent more than 11 minutes pasting together his (for the most part) ostentatiously monochrome footage into this ambling, disordered collage.

"Life is an adventure of our own design," Patti intones at the beginning, before going on to tell all the usual stories about William S Burroughs, Robert Mapplethorpe and Bob Dylan.

An artistic milieu that once seemed remote and thrilling has now become so cosily over-discussed one half expects Disney to reinvent pre-punk New York as a theme park. Have your photograph taken with giant-headed Tom Verlaine. Get yourself a Lydia Lunch lunchbox. And so forth.

To be fair, the singer's stubborn originality continues to show through and the occasional sequence - visiting her parents; jawing with Sam Shepard - is genuinely touching, but Dream of Life may strain the patience of even the most fervent Smith enthusiast.