The Doors

Year of Release:  1991
Director:  Oliver Stone
Screenplay:  J. Randal Johnson and Oliver Stone
Starring:  Val Kilmer, Meg Ryan, Kevin Dillon, Kyle MacLachlan, Frank Whaley, Michael Madsen, Billy Idol, Kathleen Quinlan
Running Time:  140 minutes
Genre:  Drama, music, biography

Venice Beach, California, 1965:  Film school dropout Jim Morrison (Kilmer) is fascinated by the emerging hippie culture surrounding him and, with his friend, keyboardist Ray Manzarek (MacLachlan), forms the rock band The Doors along with drummer John Densmore (Dillon) and guitarist Robby Krieger (Whaley).  With Morrison's poetic lyrics along with his enigmatic and darkly seductive on-stage persona the band become one of the biggest in America by the end of the 60s.  As the band are riding high (in more ways than one), Morrison is involved in a tumultuous relationship with girlfriend, Pamela Courson (Ryan), while his personal demons threaten to destroy everything.

This film is almost the quintessential rock biopic:  The band are formed, become successful, and are then in danger of being destroyed from within.  To be fair, this film is mis-titled.  It's not really about the band The Doors, the focus is almost entirely on Jim Morrison and the other band members barely get a look in.  Although you don't really learn much about Morrison either, there is no context for anything that happens or explanation for his behaviour.  The movie is more interested in depicting crazy rock star excess, as Morrison loses himself in drink, drugs and sex.  According to many people who knew Morrison, the film is pretty inaccurate in it's depiction of him, and is probably at it's best in recreating the sights and sounds of the sixties, from the sunshine psychedelia of the West Coast to the strange, seductive underworld of Andy Warhol's New York parties, however accurate that may be.  The Morrison depicted in the film is such a horrible, toxic character that it is really hard to understand how anyone would want to spend more than two minutes in his company.    Meg Ryan and Kathleen Quinlan are severely underserved in a film where none of the female characters are given any real personality or agency. The film delves a lot into Morrison's fascination with shamanism and mysticism, which can be seen as either deep or deeply pretentious (the film's depiction of a mystical Native American spirit guide was parodied in the film Wayne's World 2 (1993)).  Oliver Stone opens up his box of cinematic tricks which makes the film look very slick and stylish, and means that it is certainly never dull.  Val Kilmer is good in the central role, helped by his striking physical resemblance to Morrison, and the music is, of course, fantastic.       

Kyle MacLachlan, Val Kilmer, Frank Whaley and Kevin Dillon break on through as The Doors