Typical of Oliver Stone, style over everything else.

Rating: 4/10 (15 March 2008)

The Doors, or more appropriately, Jim Morrison: The Movie, is about Jim Morrison's short, but influential life from his failed film career to the band The Doors, to his untimely death. I'm not quite sure what this movie was trying to say about Morrison and the band. If it was saying that Jim was anything but a crazy drug addict, then it failed, because that's the only side we see of him here. Occasionally, Stone lets us see his poetic side, but very rarely, and when it does show it's because he's tripping on acid. There's no emotional connections to any character, except maybe Morrison's girlfriend Pamela Courson, but not much for her either. So, with no emotion and no character development, what we have is the outline of what happened with The Doors, and a lot of Val Kilmer imitating Jim Morrison's singing.
Everything about this was not all bad. The acting is quite good. Val Kilmer was very believable playing the hard rocker who didn't care for anyone else's opinions. Meg Ryan was good as his struggling girlfriend. Kathleen Quinlin is very good as his critic sex mate. Even Kyle McLaughlan was good as the keyboard player Ray Manzerack. Along with being a good actor, McLaughlan also had the best character, an advocate of Morrison's work, but also a sense of reason that was never listened to. Frank Whaley and Kevin Dillon play the other two band members in small thankless roles.
The direction starts off pretty cool, but by the end turns into a major headache. Stone constantly uses blue and red lenses on the camera, no matter what the scene, so instead of being used to symbolize sadness, or anger, they're just there to look cool. A lot of odd zoom ins and strange camera angles are used, and again, they start pretty neat, but after you realize Oliver Stone is just throwing them about for no reason, they get tiring. This whole movie can be compared to his later film "Natural Born Killers". They both have uncaring character, a weird style that get's to be a huge headache, and an ending making us think "Why should we care?"
It's really hard to tell why this film was made. Obviously because Oliver Stone wanted to make a film on this popular band, but to show what? Was it to show how influential Morrison was? Because it showed he was influential to some people, but that was because of his crazy music, not himself personally. Was this meant as an homage to the band? Because it actually made the band look bad, and if this is why it was made, then it was an even bigger failed attempt then this movie was. Or was this made because Oliver Stone liked the music and just wanted to make a movie? Probably. This had no purpose or reason to be made, except maybe to turn people on to the music, and even that didn't work for me.
My rating: * 1/2 out of ****. 135 mins. R for sexuality, language, drug use and violence.