The Film
Nominally, When You're Strange is a film about The Doors, but let's face it, any work about The Doors inevitably ends up being about front man Jim Morrison. Director Tom DiCillo's film is certainly no exception. Although he may have been very well intentioned in his endeavor to tell the story of "The Doors," right from the opening of the film, DeCillo begins with an actor playing Morrison driving through the desert as news of the musician's death is announced over the radio. This is hardly an omen that When You're Strange is going to move beyond the usual tales of "The Lizard King."
And When You're Strange doesn't. It's difficult to fault DiCillo in this regard, however. So much has already been written and filmed about The Doors and Morrison, there is nothing new to be brought to the table. Instead, with When You're Strange, DeCillo takes an almost fetishistic approach to detail when it comes to following the story of Morrison and his band mates step by step as if including every bit of minutia and all that we already know will somehow yield a profound revelation.
Of course, it doesn't. Rather, we are left with the same stories we always have about The Doors, from their early beginnings at UCLA film school, experiments with LSD, Morrison's growth from shy singer with his back to the crowd to wild frontman with law troubles. Drugs, booze, women -- we all know the tales and the songs.
When You're Strange is best for its abundance of performance footage and personal films of The Doors, Jim Morrison, and the almost-too-serious narration by Johnny Depp, whose over-the-top reverence still manages to work.
The Picture
When You're Strange, with its various archival sources from film, rudimentary video, etc., is not going to blow anyone away in high definition with its AVC/MPEG-4 1080p transfer, but Eagle Rock has done a serviceable job with a documentary of this sort. There aren't any noticeable compression artifacts to disturb the image; grain and original video noise are present making everything look authentic and quite vintage.
The Sound
An English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is provided along with a LPCM 2.0 mix. As to be expected from a documentary, there is nothing very exciting about the 5.1 at all. The opening sequence of the film provides the most exciting aural thrill, discretely utilizing the surround tracks for a collage of sound. From there on, it's mostly low-level ambience to the surround channels with a decently wide stereo spread across the front and good clear dialogue in the center channel. Low frequencies are weighted by the sub down to the upper low range, but hardly resounding.
The Extras
The extras are hardly a windfall, but the Conversations with... (1.78:1; 1080p/24; 0:08.54) feature does offer an opportunity to glimpse Jim Morrison's family members remembering the late singer.
Final Thoughts
When You're Strange offers nothing new in the realm of Doors documentaries, but Doors fans will still enjoy all of the detailed footage gathered together here, even if much of it has been seen before.
Product Details
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