This all-but-ignored masterpiece is about the Monkees becoming aware that they are fictional characters in a movie (Head), and that everything they do or say had already been written in an (unseen) script they seem to be following. Head was written by Jack Nicholson, Rafelson, and Peter Tork during a three-day LSD trip in a suite at an expensive Hollywood hotel. The other three Monkees only acted in it.

They fight this every way they can by doing things not in the script. They deliberately flub their lines, walk off sets, tear up scenery, punch other actors for no reason; and ultimately, commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. 

For instance, in the rapid flashes of a psychedelic party scene, if you watch frame-by-frame, you can see Rafelson sitting next to the camera and cameraman, very deliberately shooting into a mirror. He is revealing that the party is actually fake and is being shot in a studio with actors who suddenly drop out of character and walk away in the middle of a conversation when the Director yells "cut!"

The Monkees, however, never drop out of character because those characters are also who they really are. That ends up being the core of the Revelation soon to come.

At every turn, they realize their increasingly-bizarre actions were exactly what they were supposed to do in the scripted film they can't escape being in. You say they went crazy and walked through the sky (which turns out to be painted on paper and hung from the ceiling as the set's background)? No problem! Hey, hey, they're the Monkees, and those wacky guys just keep monkeying around! 

In the end, even their deaths did not set them free. That was how the movie was supposed to end, and their motionless, waterlogged bodies are fished out of the river, put in another box, and stacked in a film studio warehouse until the characters are needed again for another studio production.

This is made all the more poignant by the fact that the Monkees really ARE fictional characters who forced themselves into the real world. They did it through the power of their music.

Ironically, near the end, Peter Tork has what he rightly sees as a hugely profound revelation that solves their problem, but unfortunately, no one listens. 

Peter realizes: "It doesn't MATTER if we're in the box (the film)". He means that it doesn't matter if will is free or illusory, and that "the only important thing is that you just let the present moment occur and occur... You need to just let 'now' HAPPEN, as it happens", without analyzing or evaluating or judging whether the experience is "valid" by some abstract definition.

When you can't even tell the difference, will being free or not doesn't matter--tying to figure out if you are the "real" you is just a pointless waste of time.

I saw this film at a very important time in my life. I was trying to figure out how to escape being just "that geeky, creepy nerd girl" by thinking about it intensely instead of just having fun (i.e., sex) like everyone else did. But the revelation in Head broke my self-imposed recursive trap and helped me more than Rafelson or Nicholson or Tork will ever know.

For decades, I've watched "Head" and wished I could thank Pete.

Was this a good movie?

Uhh, how about, like...

==< YES >==

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positive