The Monkees: Season 2
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Movie Reviews of The Monkees: Season 2
Movie Review: Nice to have it, could be better
Summary: 3 Stars
I agree with some other reviewers that the sound and picture quality on some of the episodes is pretty shoddy.
But my biggest complaint is the packaging. Very cute, but completely impractical. Whatever glue is holding the "sleeves" together just doesn't work (three of the five are already breaking) and the "record player" box is so broken that it looks like it should be holding a fast food burger rather than a set of dvds. I plan to replace the packaging with some real DVD boxes as soon as I get a chance.
Movie Review: Mediocre overall
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm a huge Monkees fan, and especially, a huge fan of the second season. To begin, I'm with fans everywhere in being thrilled that the entire series is now available on DVD. It's long overdue and I'm happy to have it. BUT -- and it's a big BUT ---BUT, this DVD set has many, many shortcomings that are unacceptable in this day and age.
1) AUDIO & VIDEO: the quality of these film prints is, in many cases, abysmal. Dirt, scratches and other damage abound. I find it TERRIBLY difficult to believe that Rhino couldn't find a better copy for transfer. Rather, I suspect they didn't want to spend the money 'cleaning' up the picture. I work in TV & Film and ALL of these scratches and dirt marks COULD have been removed digitally. But, they were not. Likewise, the audio is often muddy and at very inconsistent volume. Some passages are soft while others are way too loud. A little quality control would have corrected this problem.
2) AUDIO COMMENTARY: With the sole exception of Mike's commentary on "Fairy Tale Monkees", all the commentaries on the episodes are 99% worthless. We're lucky if, in a given 28-minute episode, there are 5-10 minutes of actual commentary. Most of the time, Davy or Peter just seem to be silently watching the episode alongside us. And most of their comments are of the "Hmm. I remember that shirt!" variety. Just totally inconsequential and very few and far between. If your major contribution on an audio commentary is, "Hmmm, I remember that shirt!", why bother even doing it? It boggles my mind that Rhino even included these commentaries. That's how inconsequential they are. One would expect slightly more insightful commentary given that the commentators are, in fact, the Monkees themselves.
3) EXTRAS: The inclusion of "33 1/3rd" is almost worth the price of admission alone. It's great to have and in the best quality I've seen thus far. The other "extras" are two :30 clips of the Monkees as a trio in '69 on a variety show. You will watch them once, and that's probably it. Also, there is an interesting but overlong interview with the series Editor who sheds many interesting insights into putting the show together.
Bottom line: even though Rhino came through with "33 1/3rd", we're supposedly buying the set for the episodes of the series: and that is where Rhino has totally dropped the ball. Rhino must either a) feel that Monkees fans are not sophisticated enough to enjoy properly restored audio and video a la the Beatles Anthology, or, b) simply not wanted to spend the money doing a proper job.
This box set, we must hope, will NOT be the definitive collection of the Monkees TV series on DVD for very long.