SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Lack of good storyline.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

On viewing this movie again in the Criterion BBS Story, I've gained a new appreciation for it. I'd say it's a flawless commentary on the assembly, execution (in many literal senses) and the desires and integrity (if any?) of some or all of The Monkees in the 'system'. Highly surreal at times, but yet making perfect sense to anyone having strong opinions on 'pop stardom', 'television diffusion', and 'political/moral diversion tactics'. It's all brilliantly and subtlety interwoven in this film. It does more to justify what The Monkees were, and The Beatles weren't. Yet, if given the chance at the time - I think both bands would gladly switch their jackets for mere poops and giggles. Both bands could claim being 'groomed and doomed'. But is so interesting that one endured the 'caverns' for their status, while the other endured the 'casting offices'. And in a way, I think the later created more of a desperate bonding than the former for the two bands. The Monkees were definitely split on 'earning their bread' and 'getting their butter'. And had opinions and awareness of the world outside of their 'bubble' that they wanted to empathize and alert their fans of as well. But were caught in such a mechanism that could jeopardize their career, yet at the same time earn them credibility and expand their fan base. I think 'Head' straddles that hurdle amazingly, not only for The Monkees, but Raffleson, Nicholson, and all others involved. How to stay in a system they're trying to escape from? Take the food from the hand, and say the bite it was given was out of love? Really miraculous considering the shackles, context, period, and all the talent that was involved, and their own personal ideas and beliefs. Art for information sake? Or information with a chrome gallery frame around it? Either way, it stands as both - then and now.

The Monkees are tossed about in a psychedelic, surrealist, plot less, circular bit of fun fluff.The film comes from the collective that includes Jack Nicholson (who wrote the script), Bob Rafelson (who directed) and Dennis Hopper (who has a cameo). To see it play out in a surreal, psychedelic manner should be no surprise.Renata Adler commented that Head "might be a film to see if you have been smoking grass, or if you like to scream at The Monkees, or if you are interested in what interests drifting heads and hysterical high-school girls." Rather, it is more than that. The film turns all the genres on their head -- western, horror, war and more are all handled in a very different way.

Jack Nicholson is lucky that actor Rip Torn quit "Easy Rider" after butting heads with director Dennis Hopper. If he hadn't been hired as Torn's replacement, where would he be now? Before finding belated stardom in the 1969 biker flick, Nicholson dabbled in screen writing, but his most notable credit, 1968's "Head," wouldn't be remembered at all today if not for the film's stars: the Monkees. The faux pop quartet consisting of two real musicians (Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork) and two actors (Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz) were created as TV's answer to the early Beatles. In an example of killing two birds with one stone, "Head" marked both their big screen debut and their last gasp as stars of any medium.There is no plot and no story, but in the waning days of the LSD-drenched 1960s, that didn't matter much. Few things geared to youth made sense back then, including some of the best music made by the Beatles ("I am the walrus, goo-goo-goo-joob"). Clarity and coherence weren't "hip," baby, so any amateur with access to a typewriter could tap out a screenplay and be taken seriously as an artist. What counted was the "Statement" you made about the "System," man, or about the "Man" himself, whoever he was. Television was always a good target, and it is the subject of some "commentary" in "Head," just as it was in Nicholson's equally lame and all but forgotten directorial debut, "Drive, He Said." The boob tube's crimes are not made clear. We see a TV as someone flips through the channels, and the clips of old movies (including 1934's "The Black Cat" with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi) are better than anything that Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson can come up with. We also see news footage of Vietnam, Rita Hayworth in "Gilda," and an ad for Playtex Cross Your Heart bra. At some point, the Monkees are trapped in a box which is probably meant to symbolize TV. We see the boys on television, as well, until Victor Mature (yes, Victor Mature of "Samson and Delilah," "The Robe," and the original "Kiss of Death") kicks the set and sends them rolling down a hill of sand and over a bridge, and . . . well, who really cares? The 1970 film version of "Myra Breckinridge" also used a lot of vintage film clips. Like "Head," it proved that the filmmaker who cannibalizes other, better movies for his own film has no worthwhile ideas of his own. "Head" has some decent music, notably a dreamy Gerry Goffin-Carole King effort called "Porpoise Song," which the Monkees only managed to take to # 62 on the Billboard chart in October 1968. Less than a year earlier, they were outselling the Beatles and spent four weeks at # 1 with "Daydream Believer" and two weeks at # 3 with "Valleri." If their appeal hadn't already waned, "Head" surely would have killed it.Brian W. Fairbanks

As their entire career was a pale impersonation of The Beatles, it is no surprise that, shortly after the great fiasco of the Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour," the Monkees would follow up with their own insipid and creative morass of a movie, called "Head." Both movies are not so much a true story with a plot (though MMT attempted to define a plot) as they are a hodge-podge of skits and snippets, interspersed with music and songs and out-takes."Head" has no plot, other than the pre-fab-four trying to break free of "the box" they are in (i.e. the type-casting of being "Monkees" and the surrounding commercialism) and yet, always finding themselves back in the box. Most skits involve breaks in the "fourth wall" and crossing over into other, seemingly unrelated scenes. Filled with anti-Vietnam war messages and attempts by the group to show their other talents, the film bounces around haphazardly- also to be blamed on the multiple directors.The film, like Magical Mystery Tour, is now excused by some fans as "wonderful symbolism and misunderstood artistic statements." Phooey. Like MMT, it is too many guys with access to too many drugs all trying to make something artsy and making crap.Like MMT, "Head" has some clever moments and offers some relatively unknown Monkees songs that are quite decent. It does develop a bit more charm than MMT and is a bit easier to sit through, but it is not ironic at all that, like everything else the Monkees did, this was just a mimicry of something the Beatles did first... even when it comes to laying an egg.