Not all it's cracked up to be...

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2001)

Oliver Stone is a masterful storyteller, and with The Doors, he is doing just that: telling stories. Anyone who has read the number of books written about The Doors and Jim Morrison understands that Stone wove together several different accounts about the "real Jim," and it seems that there is not much truth to his characters. Val Kilmer is fantastic in his characterization of Jim, but it is so far from the true Jim, that viewers must realize that this film is primarily fiction. Meg Ryan's innocent, sweet Pam Courson is another fictionalization of a real person that widely misses the mark. While the film is visually stunning and the music intense, the events that take place in the movie did not necessarily take place in real life. True fans of Jim Morrison and The Doors will hopefully view the film for what it is: the Hollywood-Oliver Stone version of the real life of a poet and artist. Read the books, listen to the music, and don't take the film at face value.