The Monkees: Season 1
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Movie Reviews of The Monkees: Season 1
Movie Review: Hey Hey were the Monkees
Summary: 5 Stars
It's the Monkees. You know you loved them.
Love it. Glad i own this now.
Movie Review: Monkees
Summary: 5 Stars
The set is wonderful it is good for the whole familey. We love itMovie Review: Good set at an exorbitant price
Summary: 4 Stars
This review will mainly be a critique of the actual contents of this package--The Monkees' first season--and not so much a review of the box itself (that will come at the very end). At the time of its airing, "The Monkees" was first regarded as an interesting curiosity (the first time rock music and rock bands were the focus of a sitcom), then as a bunch of ridiculous bubblegum hype with musicians who didn't even play their own instruments (which was not true, of course). But in retrospect it has been revered as a mostly successful experiment that featured four very talented young men impersonating a band--The Beatles--that was very hard to impersonate, with some great music to match. "The Monkees"--its first season in particular--really does play like a colorized, slightly updated 1966 version of "A Hard Day's Night", replete with zany edits, fast-forwards, in-jokes and self-references (they frequently comment directly at the camera), playful social commentary (esp towards the older generation) and pioneering music video bits. A lot of this was extremely pioneering for television, which makes the show still watchable today, even if some of the humor (esp that taken from the traditional sitcom format of the time) now seems old-fashioned. What's even better, all four Monkees are very
charismatic; Nesmith's dry, countrified style is my favorite (he's also easily my favorite musician in the band), but all three are fine (even Jones!), and they work brilliantly together, as if having performed for years. The first season got better and better as it progressed, as well, with the scripts eventually dropping a lot of the old-fashioned humor in favor of the "hip"
expressions and humor of the mid-to-late Swinging 60s (which may still look old-fashioned to observers 40 years later, unless they are--like me--big fans of the decade).
The Monkees were considered a bubblegum act during their day, but that was largely because of their reputation of having been pre-fabricated by TV producers, and partly due to the Jones-sung ballads. However, if any other band had come out at the time with their image and songs, they would probably have been well-respected. The first season wardrobe of paisley and flower-print shirts (as well as the famous six-button, vaguely western uniform), checkered and striped pants, enormous belt buckles and green granny glasses was very 1966, heavily influenced by what was going on in Swinging London and Los Angeles as "mod" gradually turned into "hippie". The music, too, was very contemporary, encompassing folk-rock, country-rock (the group, and Nesmith in particular, was very pioneering in this respect), UK Beatle-esque pop (esp from the 65-66 period), ballads, hard garage rock ("She", "Words", "Mary Mary", "Stepping Stone") and even proto-psychedelia ("Take A Giant Step", "This Just Doesn't Seem To Be My Day"). All the songs were written by excellent writing teams (including Nesmith, who provides some classic tunes in the form of "Sweet Young Thing", "Mary Mary", "Papa Gene's Blues" and "You Just May Be The One") and are very slickly produced, which actually put them ahead of many bands of the time. Although it is true that they do not play the instruments on the studio records during the first season, they soon rectified that situation for "Headquarters" and they did play live on tour, which is documented in the season closer that has become celebrated as one of their best episodes.
The second season would see the band become full-fledged hippies (actually, the word "hippie" makes a hilarious first appearance here in an episode filmed in November of '66 entitled "I Was A Teenage Monster), with the plots and filming style becoming even more surreal and self-referential and some drug humor subtly laced in--but that's for another review, hopefully soon! In closing, Rhino did a fair job in releasing the set (the picture quality is the best I've ever seen it, and as good as it's ever going to get), although the price is, as mentioned, very steep; I, too, would rather have ditched the elaborate box packaging in favor of a cut price. The commentaries are sometimes good, sometimes bad, and the 5.1 sound doesn't really work, but these are minor quibbles--the episode trivia is very thorough and the chance to see the original unaired version of the pilot (even with the poor print) is pretty cool. Anyways, one star knocked off for the price, and because they also could have included alternate versions of the romps shown in syndication that featured different songs from the very great "Headquarters" period.
Movie Review: The Monkees are back in DVD form! (yay!)
Summary: 4 Stars
Its great to finally see the Monkees on DVD! I loved this show as a child, I watched it in reruns on Nickelodeon and MTV in the 80s. Sure, I was around 5 or 6, but I loved the show, I thought Micky, Peter, Mike and Davy were adorable, and the music was really good. Of course I've caught the show on TV since then, and I remember they had a special in 1996 or 1997 where they attempted to re-do the Monkees (apparently they tried this in the 1980's as "The New Monkees" which didn't last.. and neither did this remake)
I think what made the Monkees work, was that there were 4 cute, young guys, each of whom appealed to a vareity of people in their own way. Micky was the zany sort of Jerry Lewis like character with his slapstick. Peter was the "dummy", Mike was the strong silent type, or the mature one, and Davy was the short, cute "teen idol" of the group. I think I liked every one of the boys at some point. But I think Mike is my favorite. :)
Also the entire idea of the show worked (all the silly comedic hijinks) because of the innocence of Micky, Mike, Peter and Davy, and of course the music was solid as well. I think one thing about the Monkees that I love also- are the outfits. This is a time when people actually dressed up on TV, even if their clothes were "funny" for the time. I think they all look handsome all dressed up. I wish people would do that today on TV!
Onto the DVD- again its great to see this show in DVD finally, its a classic. As silly and unreal as it is, it works. Now, there are a few things that annoy me about this DVD. You cannot "PLAY ALL EPISODES"(if there is a way someone PLEASE post it!) - you can "Play all Romps" which is great, but this is a show I'd like to watch and then have on in the background, and you can't do that because once an episode ends it returns to the title screen where you have to pick another episode.
Another semi-annoying thing is that there isn't commentary on each episode. Only a handful have cometary from Peter, Mike, Davy, James Frawley and Rafelson. Which is fine, but some episodes have multiple tracks, so that 2 people are commenting on the same episode but on different tracks, so you have to watch an entire episode twice to hear each persons comentary.
On a high note, I do like the packaging of little 45 records and a record holder. Very unique. Also I know some have complained about the quality of the DVD. I think its fine, I don't really notice a lot of "noise" or "dust" unless I'm watching it on a computer DVD player. Other than that, it doesn't look bad at all on TV. Remember, these films are almost 40 YEARS OLD! So you can't expect it to be perfect, even if coming from the masters. The sound is good, it isn't perfect, but again its almost 40 years old as well, that includes the songs. They are a little noisy, but again if that really bothers you, check out a Monkees CD for the music.
I think overall this DVD set is worth owning. The show is still entertaining after all these years, even though its a bit silly with its slapstick humour. But I enjoy the show, and the songs- I believe the Monkees were pioneers for the whole music video age, and this was WAY before your MTV and your VH1! I hope this helps in your decision to purchase this DVD!
Movie Review: How not to make a DVD box set
Summary: 4 Stars
I picked up this set with great anticipation. I loved these shows as a kid, stayed up for the marathon in the 80's to video tape them off MTV, and eventually got both seasons from Columbia House Home Video.With all the recent technical advances these should have blown me away, like the Beatles Anthology set did. However, it appears Rhino didn't do any restoration at all to these shows, and used the exact tapes they did with the Columbia House videos. While DVD technology does make the pictures clearer, they still have many spots and flaws throughout like copies of films shown on old movie projectors. Even the ending credits on the first episode skip several seconds, like a bad 45. Couldn't they find better copies out there somewhere?
Yes, the special features are interesting. But why is the 16mm pilot black and purple? Same thing can be said about the commercials. I've seen better copies of these at the Monkees conventions BEFORE DVD's even existed.
Restoration can be done - check out "Strawberry Fields" (or any other video clip) from the Beatles Anthology. That stuff is as old, or older than these shows. Hardly any flaws are on the Beatles Anthology.
The sound doesn't blow me away either, especially how the volume fluctuates in "Last Train to Clarksville" in "The Monkees at the Movies". The soundtrack still sounds better to me on the Columbia House videos.
They did put the set in an interesting box - probably spent their budget on it, rather than improving the video quality. While visually cute, it's a bad design. It doesn't fit in the shelf with all the rest of your DVD' collection, and, even though the box is large, there's no protection for the DVD's. They slide out and stay in the cardboard holder when you pull out the 'record' cover, or you end up putting fingerprints on them trying to get them out if they do stay inside. The box itself will self-destruct if you aren't careful because the upper lid is larger than the lower. You can't open and close it very often before a corner will split (mine actually came damaged from delivery in the mail).
To say I'm very disappointed is an understatement. I hope they get their act together for Season Two (and re-do this one, too).
I'm giving it 4 stars since I really do love the shows. If I graded it on quality, it would get 2 stars.