Sunday, May 24, 2009

The Kids are Alright. The Doors are Not.

I have never cared much about The Who. I have always loved the Tommy album (and movie), but I assumed that was an anomaly...they couldn't REALLY be that good, could they?

As part of my '60s kick, I rented "The Kids are Alright." I was disappointed to learn that it's more of a clip-collection than a documentary, but I came away with new respect: The Who really, really kicked butt. They were tight, brilliant, and crazy. This doesn't mean I'm going to run out and buy all of their albums, but I've come away with new respect.

Then I tried to watch "The Doors". It was terrible. I suppose it's okay if you buy into the hyper-pretentious Jim Morrison schtick, but if you don't...well, you don't want to watch Oliver Stone's equally pretentious movie. He managed to compress their entire pre-fame career into a single five-minute scene ("Hey guys, let's try this song...and here's a neat intro...great, we're a BAND!"), and then spend the next half an hour on pointless a peyote trip.

It became obvious to me that Oliver Stone made the movie because he wants to fellate a shaman. Everything else was secondary. I stopped watching after 45 minutes.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Did you make it as far as the Factory scene in The Doors? That's the only thing in the movie worth watching.

And The Who were indeed great.

Adam Thornton said...

I didn't get that far, I gave up during the endless "peyote" scene. Once Jim Morrison ran into the Natural Born Killers Shaman my pretention meter ranneth over.