just another Oliver Stone fever dream

Rating: 2/10 (14 November 2010)

In an early scene of Oliver Stone's typically overwrought tribute to one of the 6o's more typically overwrought bands, young rock messiah Jim Morrison makes an uninvited visit (over the balcony) to the Venice Beach pad of his girlfriend Pamela Courson, who says, "don't you believe in doors?" Morrison's reply, "they're a waste of time", not only provides the one moment of (unintended) wit in the entire film, but sounds an ominous warning to what follows: another jarring one-note melodrama from a director clearly too preoccupied with his own bogus sense of cinematic 'style'. Stone's ballistic visual scheme and grade school symbolism are perfectly matched (in his own mind, at least) to the feverish 60's counter-culture of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, but even at such a strenuous length (135 minutes) the film only scratches at the surface of its subject: concert follows scandalous concert, with no variation in tone or texture, until the Lizard King finally overdoses and dies. Val Kilmer does a credible rendering of Morrison's languid sex-and-death mannerisms, but the ill-judged caricatures of Ed Sullivan and Andy Warhol are foolish, as is the non-existent bust added to the martyr's graffiti-covered Paris tomb: it resembles Kilmer more than Kilmer resembles Morrison.