Classic Oliver Stone - Bits of Both Worlds

Rating: 6/10 (21 October 2009)

Oliver Stone's rock & roll biography THE DOORS (1991) contains a fine performance by Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison, is enchantingly shot by Robert Richardson who goes the distance in capturing the 'acid experience', and is accompanied by a fine soundtrack that may become overused when Stone paints himself into a corner. The variable film is best when Morrison and his California cools go searching in the desert and experience Native American spirituality, and when they're in studio fighting, struggling and recording, or when Kilmer runs the show with his great impressionism. The film faults when Morrison starts showing his more sensitive side concerning his childhood and romantic relationship towards Meg Ryan's character, or the fact that the artistic rambling by 'The American Poet' is mostly things you've heard when shuffling through a Doors record, and it doesn't really do much to get beneath Morrison's or the audience's skin. The film rarely surprises, and at its best it's a superficial ride of sex, drugs and rock & roll.