The Doors is a thrilling spectacle - the King Kong of rock movies - featuring a starmaking, ball-of-fire performance by Val Kilmer as Morrison.

It's a slick, smarter than average biopic.

The experience of watching The Doors is not always very pleasant.

Val Kilmer is extraordinary as Morrison, holding the centre with a demonic charisma, while Stone recreates the late '60s milieu with vibrant versimilitude.

The movie does a pretty good job with period ambience. But it's a long haul waiting for the hero to keel over.

By recreating things too well, the film itself becomes as boring, indulgent and over-stuffed as its hero.

This $40 million look at Jim Morrison's short, wild ride through a rock idol life is everything one expects from the filmmaker - intense, overblown, riveting, humorless, evocative, self-important and impossible to ignore.

I don't care what Dylan said, everyone must not get Stoned.

You don't see The Doors, you survive it. [01 Mar 1991]

Maybe it was fun to bathe in decadence back then. But this is no time to wallow in that mire.