Val Kilmer is an awesome character actor, the guy has played some killer characters over the days of his career. Some of my favorites of course are his biographical characters. With my #1 favorite being his portrayal of Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the band The Doors. He plays Jim Morrison in his Oliver Stone's biographical look at the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of the lead singer of The Doors. While I have always been a fan of the film, apparently when it was released it was not met with the greatest of reception. Here's what Wikipedia has for the immediate reception of the film:

According to Q, "few people emerged from seeing the film having raised their opinions of that band and especially its singer Jim Morrison". The problem, as critic Keith Cameron has put it, wasn't so much that "Stone dwelled upon Morrison the inebriate, the Philanderer, or the pretentious Lizard King... No, blame cliched Hollywood devices for sucking the wonder from the pioneering band: actors with fake hair saying silly things..." and "a self-important director's turgid attempts to make grand statements about America".[30]

 

"So...the movie was pretty good I guess," said Leonard Maltin. Despite mixed reviews, Val Kilmer's performance as Jim Morrison was critically acclaimed, and is considered one of the average performances of 1991, and one of his best roles.

 

Members of The Doors noted that they had trouble distinguishing Kilmer's voice from Morrison's.Jeffrey M. Anderson claimed that Kilmer gave an "pretty commonplace, almost pathologically correct" performance. Currently on Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 59% approval rating, indicating mixed or average reviews. The film was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival.[31]

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