Val is a pretty good documentary that wavers in interest and quality but ultimately skews closer to pretty good than average. It’s about the life and career of Val Kilmer who is recovering from throat cancer and has a breathing tube that he has to cover to talk.

The fact that he clearly seems to be aware of his situation is probably the best (and soberest) thing about the movie. Val Kilmer could be a vapid Hollywood star in total denial but he knows he doesn’t look his best and he knows trading on his earlier career tap-dances up to the edge of desperation. And we get to see him signing autographs for Top Gun, Batman, and so forth at Comic Con and entertaining a crowd of Doc Holiday fans. We see how much it takes out of him on a mental and physical level but also how much he seems to be able to appreciate it.

The doc does cover – sometimes too briefly, sometimes too much – his career from Top Secret up through his Mark Twain one-man show. We never get enough detail in most cases and I frankly think it spends way too much time on The Doors… but clearly that movie must have meant a lot to him but we never get that verbally. The most interesting part was his time filming the Island of Dr. Moreau because filming that movie was a train wreck and we get to see some warts-and-all Hollywood drama.

The doc is narrated by his son who sounds (and looks) eerily like Val Kilmer. It uses a ton of archival footage, most of which he filmed himself since childish. It’s fun to see young Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn reacting to a video camera like it’s a novel and surprising thing (because it was at the time).

I’d say there are some dry spells and it gets a little too indulgent. It’s ultimately a cheerleader for Val Kilmer… even though it does present us with some of his Hollywood bad boy behavior. That’s probably for the best – its a film made up of his personal videography and that would only be available with his explicit permission. We have not come to bury him, but to praise him, I suppose.

Score: 79