So much average

A Masterpiece!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Blistering performances.

A poor combination of borscht-belt jokes, vaudeville sight gags that were 30 years old even then, a predictable Hanna-Barbera cartoon approach to a show that couldn't quite decide if it was a kid's show or something more grownup. When I watched the show at age 11 I thought it was stupid. I watched this show again recently on Antenna TV and although many of my opinions have changed over the years the original one remains. This is bad slap-stick with songs, performed by characters that were not funny and couldn't act. The surprising part is many of the songs do hold up. Even 55 years later several of the pieces are memorable and well done. I also enjoy the pretty girls and the mid 60s cars I grew up with. However, this is bad TV.

I was 9 or 10 years old when The Monkees debuted on NBC. I have been a fan ever since. I even saw them in concert during the summer of 1967. I was very peeved at not being able to hear them due to the screaming girls. I thought girls must be the dumbest creatures on earth, but of course I changed my feelings before long. They were still dumb as far as I could tell, but they were cute, too. I saw the Monkees again when three of them (minus Nesmith) reunited in the mid-eighties and late nineties. The Monkees have been unfairly ostracized for decades. "They don't play their own instruments", their critics complained. They were not allowed to play on their first two albums. Don Kirshner, their egomaniacal producer, wanted total control. This ultimately got him fired by the band. He released More of The Monkees without permission from the band. If that weren't bad enough, the album's liner notes were pure Kirshner. Kirshner's egomania is all too apparent. He shamelessly name drops and barely mentions The Monkees at all. Michael Nesmith put his fist through a wall when the band met with Kirshner later. According to Micky Dolenz, Nez snarled, "That coulda been your face, motherf-----!" In any event, that was it for Kirshner as far as The Monkees were concerned. They finally had creative control of the music. For their third album, The Monkees Headquarters, they played on every song with minimal outside accompaniment. They credited the extra 2 or 3 musicians in the liner notes, something other bands (Beatles included) were not so forthcoming about. Micky Dolenz has never gotten the credit he deserves as a great rock vocalist. Just listen to No Time, Randy Scouse Git, Going' Down, Words, Pleasant Valley Sunday, etc. Each Monkey had talent. Micky had a great voice, Mike Nesmith was a good singer and musician, Peter Tork played about a dozen instruments, and Davy Jones was a superb showman and a pretty good singer. About 20 years ago, there was talk of a Monkees TV special. Davy was explaining how it would be set up. "Mike would produce, Micky would direct, and Peter would be in charge of the music." "But what would you do?" Davy was asked. "I would be the star, of course, and get all the girls!" When I see some of the acts who have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (the Sex Pistols?!) there is no doubt The Monkees deserve to be enshrined. They certainly are more deserving than many who are already in.

I have enjoyed watching this show for years since I first saw it in syndication on local television back in the late 1970s. From the first time I watched The Monkees I was hooked and have watched the show ever since. Whenever it would be shown over the years I was there to watch it, including the revival in popularity that arose in 1986 when MTV ran a Monkees marathon that exposed their antics to a new generation of fans. The show had a great zaniness that blended a unique mixture of music and comedy, which made the show a delight for me. As a kid I enjoyed the entertaining plots and thought it would be cool to hang around with these 4 guys. I did, though, always look forward to the musical numbers that occurred in each episode.The music on the show was what really appealed to me and made me a fan in the beginning. Their albums from the 60s still make up part of my music collection. The show was never that popular when it was originally airing on commercial television, but the music really helped push the popularity of the band giving The Monkees a cult-like status similar to The Beatles at the time. I especially like the music of Michael Nesmith. The songs that appeared in the show by Nez were most appealing to me and this carried over to his solo career as well. Another thing that was a great part of the show was the comic timing of Mickey Dolenz. He always cracks me up with his wacky style of voices and improvisation. All four were talented in their own way, but Mickey Dolenz was the funniest to me. It is still one of my all time favorite shows and has left a lasting impression on me that will stay with me my whole life. One of the more memorable shows was the parody of Faust called The Devil and Peter Tork. It had some seriousness, but that helped the comedy to play. Some episodes played out better than others with the second season being a little more reflective of the 60s culture that was growing popular during that period in America. Was it a TV show? Was it a rock n' roll group? It was neither, and it was a little of both. Mickey Dolenz equated their becoming a group to Leonard Nimoy becoming a Vulcan. No matter what you believe, we can all agree that The Monkees, although brief in its original run, was about a group that did play, that did perform their own music and the way they did it left an impact on generations both young and old and will do so for years to come.

"An American version of 'The Goodies' starring the American version of the Beatles" would be a pretty apt way of summing up "The Monkees", a delightfully offbeat television show that I first recall seeing, in rerun form, back in the late '70s (I wasn't even thought of when it first came out). Being a fanatical metalhead, I must admit that the music of the title group doesn't do a lot for me, but this hasn't prevented me from enjoying every other aspect of the above show, given how truly bizarre the last thing is. It's also not hard to see, from watching reruns of "The Monkees", just why the title group was so popular back when the aforementioned show first came out. They were four fairly good-looking young men who came across, in their TV programme at least, as genuinely nice guys. (Ugh! I can't believe I just said that! May the gods of METAL forgive me!)Of all the episodes of "The Monkees" that I remember seeing, the one that had the most lasting effect on me was undoubtedly "Captain Crocodile". The cream pie scene at the beginning of that one really burned itself into my subconscious; seldom have I seen a more bizarre example of public humiliation on television. All I want to know is, where can I get one of those cute little leafy caps that the Monkees were forced to wear in that scene? They were cool.