Movie Review: When You're Strange

Title: When You're Strange
Director: Tom DiCillo
Rating: 4 Stars

Review: I had an opportunity to catch this documentary about Jim Morrison and his experience with The Doors at Peoria Theater, our local Brew & View.  I'm glad my buddy mentioned it because it contained a lot of footage of the band together that I'd never seen before.  I believe this documentary does an excellent job in capturing the music of The Doors, especially as it relates to the counter-culture movement of the 1960s.

Tom DiCillo set the story of The Doors against a backdrop of Jim Morrison's own film, HWY: An American Pastoral.  HWY is the expression of one of Morrison's fantasy of being picked up as a hitchhiker and then killing the car's original driver (one he also expresses in the song "Riders on the Storm).  DiCillo artfully used the imagery of hitchhiker's journey to introduce each section of When You're Strange.

There isn't a great deal to say about plot here, as the movie merely follows the band from formation through to Morrison's death in 1971.  If you're not familiar with the story of the band itself, it's a lot like a classic Behind the Music episode on a stellar scale.  Band forms, does great stuff, member of band gets out of control on drugs/alcohol (and in Jim Morrison's case, WAY OUT OF CONTROL), said member explodes into supernova sealing band's legend.  DiCillo covers all of it at a reasonable detail level, so if you'd like to learn about the band this is a great film for you.  If you know a lot about The Doors already, the commentary will be wasted on you (even if it's delivered by Johnny Depp) because you probably already know it.  My only complaint was a little bit of the accompanying imagery/commentary is at times a little heavy handed for my taste, but all-in-all I thought this was an excellent movie.

Interestingly, this movie got mixed reviews, garnering only 67% or so on review aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes.  I can't imagine what any reasonable complaint would be, so suspect that some of the reviews are tainted by a dislike for The Doors or Jim Morrison.  In my case, I have loved the Doors since I was about 11... So I was good to go.  If you like The Doors, or would like to learn something more about them, I highly recommend When You're Strange.