Review of When You're Strange (2010) by Joe R — 07 Jan 2011

Johnny Depp's faux-Hunter Thompson tones on the voiceover for this documentary lets us know right off the bat that director Tom DiCillo and Depp are part of the pack that believe Jim Morrisson's idiotic Native-American-shaman-poet-messiah act is supposedly deep artistic brilliance. The Doors were a fantastic blues-rock group, but the idea that Morrisson was anything other than a good singer and a charismatic front-man is a con, one that was furthered by Oliver Stone's vapid myth-making out of the band's history. WHEN YOUR STRANGE seems to set out to do a more straightforward take, but it ultimately digresses into the same brand of misguided worship of a deeply pretentious individual that marinates in a sea of the most maddening brand of sixties pop-culture fetishism. It all comes to a head when Johnny Depp tells us about Jim Morrisson's "Mr. Mojo Rising" mantra, before revealing it's an anagram for his name, mistaking Morrisson's shallow narcissism for some kind of drug-addled genius.

Where WHEN YOU'RE STRANGE succeeds is as a piece of filmmaking. Tom DiCillo and his editors, Micky Blythe and Kevin Krasny, have a virtuosic touch, effective in their assault of archival footage and photographs. Most rock docs are constructed in a paint-by-numbers fashion and are inherently uncinematic. Since most documentaries get seen at home anyway, practitioners of the doc-making discipline have gotten less ambitious with how their films are presented, recent rock docs like WHO IS HARRY NILSSON? only have small screen appeal, making them glorified episodes of VH1 Behind The Music. WHEN YOU'RE STRANGE wisely avoids this trap, and is more cinematic than any other recent rock doc, with the exception of Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen's superior RUSH: BEYOND THE LIGHTED STAGE, a rock doc that is not only great cinema, but has genuine and interesting insights on its subject. WHEN YOU'RE STRANGE is a pleasure to absorb in this manner, too bad the movies immature college hippie mentality prevents it from being truly exciting, but then again, it's hard when your main subject was stuck in that mind set.