Best known as the Oscar-winning director of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Amadeus," the Czech-born Milos Forman was orphaned at 10 when his parents were seized by the Nazis and later killed in concentration camps. Raised by relatives, he had only three options when he failed to qualify for drama school: courses in mining and metallurgy, law school or studies at FAMU, the Prague film academy.

"If FAMU had not accepted me," Forman says, "I'd probably be a mining engineer today."

That's just one of many anecdotes in "Milos Forman: What Doesn't Kill You ... ," an affectionate but somewhat haphazard documentary about Forman's life and work. It's worthwhile as a tribute (the kind you'd find as a DVD bonus feature), but too often it feels perfunctory, beginning substantially with the trauma of Forman's early years before settling into a routine survey of his films.

Those films (including "Loves of a Blonde," "Ragtime" and "The People vs. Larry Flynt") are enduring testaments to Forman's prodigious talent, but director Miloslav {Scaron}mídmajer can't seem to find the right balance of biography and filmography that would allow us to fully appreciate the man and his work.

Even the abundant interviews feel oddly arbitrary, more skin-deep than substantial. "Amadeus" Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham is included, but where's co-star Tom Hulce? Louise Fletcher from "Cuckoo's Nest," but no Jack Nicholson? Despite a five-year filming schedule, {Scaron}mídmajer leaves a lot of gaps unfilled and barely skims the surface of Forman's life with his third wife and young twin sons.

There are rewards along the way: An opera-directing gig in Prague reunites Forman with his adult twin sons from a previous marriage, and archival footage captures essential highlights, as when Forman's 1967 film "The Fireman's Ball" was banned by Czech censors and subsequently rescued at Cannes by French directors François Truffaut and Claude Berri.