Impressive performance by Val Kilmer and interesting story line, however largely exaggerated and glamorized by Oliver Stone, who seemed to want to portray the myth of Jim Morrison more than the reality. Apparently, many of Morrison's close friends and family were very unhappy with the film's portrayal of Jim. Still an entertaining film, but should be taken with a grain of salt.
Particular insight into the life of Jim Morrison
I like The Doors so I was looking forward to this. Jeez it was bad. The acting was woodenl. The messages in this movie seemed like they were create in such a way that even kids could understand it. A quick example is when a man yells 'hey long hair!' Is that supposed to make us think of prejudice against men with long hair. Or the guy in the dressing room who is a square in a suit. He says 'grovy' and 'you dig' but he's not cool enough to pull it off. He's some joke. Everything in this movie is handled in that simple and dumbed down way. It's cliche and cringy dialogue and ends up makeing caricature characters. I think Andy Warhol in this was a perfect example. Also it makes sure it mentions death every ten minutes as though Jim isn't scared of death or something.
The poetic hippy feel in this movie was also cringy sometimes.
This made me not enjoy The doors music.
Estimated budget $38,000,000.
Review by bizzortVIP 5BlockedParent2023-09-18T07:52:10Z
val kilmer and the live music scenes are so good that this film deserves to be seen, even though meg ryan and oliver stone ruin too much of the rest. jim morrison was not the guy portrayed in this film, and i don't understand why oliver stone did this hatchet job to jim and the band. as ray manzarek has noted, the guy in this film is an asshole, and ray would never have been this guy's friend. do not take this as a historically accurate biopic. watch it to enjoy val kilmer's performance, and the second-to-none live music scenes that capture the band's magic onstage.
meg ryan is awful in this, but it may not be entirely her fault. ryan portrays pam as an uptight nag, but i suppose we don't know what material she had to work with. kyle maclachan as ray manzarek is so off base and terrible, portraying him as a hippie dippie sidekick. really, there are only two reasons to watch this, but those two reasons are so incredible that this is worth seeing, from my completely biased opinion as a doors fan who has come to terms with this film as not being good but it's good popcorn theater and the best we'll ever get so i may as well enjoy it.