The Doors
Two Disc Special EditionTrailer Watching
The Doors, the movie can be extremely frustrating at times. This isn't the first time I have seen it either. Probably 5-6 times in total, and yet I always come away from it agitated. Not sure why I keep coming back to the movie every few years. What's even more bizarre is that I'm not even a fan of the band. Sure, there are a few cool songs (
Touch Me, LA Woman, Light My Fire), but in general, I'm not a fan because I'm a fan of psychedelic rock. With that said, the myth and personae of
Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer) has always intrigued me, even if I do think as a vocalist he is very overrated.
But what about the movie makes me want to punch a wall at times?
Oliver Stone. He has always operated outside the fringes of Hollywood and does things his own way. He is forever stuck in the
Vietnam era. It's what shaped him as both a person and a film maker. So he goes back to what he knows best. Unfortunately, I just don't want to "relive" HIS experience of what it was like to live in the 60's and this movie tries very hard to give the viewer just that with the way things are shot and edited. When it goes into experimental film making mode, that's him trying to invoke what it's like to be tripping on
LSD. I can only guess if that is in fact what it's like.
The other times when the movie has a strong narrative structure does it get interesting. But these scenes are far and few between and
Stone keeps going back to the well over and over which makes the movie as a whole seem very unfocused. As a movie goer, I would say this is a
Skip. Would a die-hard
Doors fan like the movie? Not sure. I doubt they would because as great as
Kilmer is in the title role,
Stone does everything in his power to make
Morrison look like a complete idiot. But the biggest blunder by him as a director is that he doesn't really tell
Morrison's story at all, but rather what the 'Myth' of
Morrison is. I still don't know what the real
Morrison was like. Maybe someday, a better film maker will make the movie that was meant to be. Had a competant director taken the reigns of the movie and done a more 'standard' bio-pic,
Kilmer would have been awarded an
Oscar nomination at the very least.
Meg Ryan, Frank Whaley, Kevin Dillon, Michael Madsen, Billy Idol and
Kathleen Quinlan do their best with what they got, but it's not enough to save a film that Stone had no right to make. One bonus of watching the movie tonight was "discovering" a couple of people that I didn't even know were in the film. A trip to see
Josie Bisset as a groupie. Why I never noticed her till tonight, I'll never know. I also caught
Debi Mazar in the crowd outside the
Whiskey a Go-Go.
Man, I wrote a lot about a movie I care very little for. Go figure..........