Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Michael Chantiri I saw this film about a year ago. I remember liking it on first viewing but I didn't love it until the fourth viewing. So what is "Head" about. The Monkees commit career suicide by jumping off a bridge and the scenes that follow show us in abstract ways why The Monkees chose to commit suicide. Pretty simple right? not really. These sequences can be hard to decipher but that makes it more re watchable and open to multiple interpretations. Some are just entertaining as well as thought provoking such as Mickys desert scene. I think it's one of the best things The Monkees ever did and because they took the risk, we now have a underrated gem. The movie thematically and from a filmmaking perspective is so artistic and gorgeous. The movie is very hip for the time and perfectly captures the counterculture of that era.Sure, it might of not been the movie The Monkees should of made for the benefit of their careers but it was the right movie to be made for the time and for The Monkees to fire back at the media for calling them fake etc.I actually did this movie as my related text for some of my English essays in my final year of schooling this year which I'm pretty proud of.I would highly recommend this to see how bizarre but awesome this film is.

rzajac There are many wonderful paeans to "Head" here among these comments, and I'll leave you to pick amongst them.But first, I'll drop a quick note regarding why *I* like "Head".Basically, it's a grab-bag, and a bit of a Rorschach. If you find something there that you resonate with, *stop* a moment and ask: "What does this say about me?" Because, believe me, there's a decent chance that perhaps only 10% of others viewing the film will resonate with that scene, and perhaps only 10% of *those* will see something specifically along the lines of what it is *you* see.This flick is a fine example of anarchic, stream-of-consciousness, tossed-over-the-wall-from-the-subconscious exposition.At best, it will give you insight. At worst, you may well wonder to whom else it may be giving insight, and why. And the rest of the time, you'll marvel that something so shapeless and formless should at the same time feel so on-the-verge of trenchancy.Case-in-point (and a bit of a spoiler, so tread at yr own risk): The bit with the transvestite; just now I'm pondering: Peter decks the waitress. Peter complains to Bob about the "image" of hitting the woman... but... "she"'s a transvestite! But we only know that behind the scene. They choose to show the behind-the-scene footage which reveals this fact. What's the meaning of all that?One more point: I was amazed at the apparent ability of the Monkees to act, specifically by being themselves and acting naturally. I found myself watching them intently, waiting for them to break character, to "fail" me and cause the production to falter. But they didn't: They did one heck of a swell job!

Brian W. Fairbanks 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

asdodge 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.