Earlier this week I heard the tail end of an NPR story about Val Kilmer, I didn’t get any of the details except that he’s currently unable to speak.
It must have been a review of this movie.
Val had throat cancer a couple years ago. He was raised as and remains a Christian Scientist, so he "treated" his cancer with prayer, until it was too late. Emergency surgery removed his cancer, but his voice box is ruined. He speaks with one of those vibrating things you hold to your throat, and without subtitles he’d be indecipherable.
This is a made-for-TV movie about his life, narrated by his son (who sounds a lot like he used to).
It consists largely of home movies, because Val Kilmer being Val Kilmer, he filmed everything in his life — camera always pointed at him. Everything. Even behind the scenes of movies where the directors asked him not to.
He always was a crap actor. He had a range from zero to zero, always giving the same wooden delivery regardless of his costume or makeup.
And apparently a crap human being as well. Self-absorbed, talentless, narcissistic, insufferable. Kind of like the male equivalent of Nicole Kidman.
And now we have proof. He even filmed himself mugging for the camera and shooting Silly String at his mother's funeral. There are some Brave Moments where talks about driving his wife away by inhabiting the character of Jim Morrison 24/7 for a year while preparing for the "Doors" movie, and bemoans his lack of closeness to his kids and his lack of any fortune from his hit movies because he bailed his father out of some bad land deals. He is reduced to signing old photos at ComicCon conventions, and often not even being recognized (he looks more like Ernest Borgnine now than "Ice"). He is not above pointing out the irony.
But overall the movie was a slow-motion train wreck.
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