I've always liked "The Monkees," the late-60s TV series about a loopy rock band created by "Five Easy Pieces" director Bob Rafelson (of all people). Some mocked the show as a rotten-stinking money-grab designed to exploit The Beatles craze, and while that might have been the thinking of network executives when they bought it, the show itself clearly just wanted to make everyone giggle. When I was just a teensy little gumdrop, the combo of milk, cereal and the slapstick antics of "The Monkees" was purest ecstasy.
Still, I wasn't old enough to know that they'd made a movie just after their show was cancelled. It's probably a good thing, because if I had, I would have wanted to go - and there's no way in hell my parents would have let me. Why? Because the movie is deliberately designed as a near-plotless LSD trip in which The Monkees, Frank Zappa, Teri Garr, Annette Funicello and Jack Nicholson (in one of his earliest roles) cavort, chuckle and generally hippie-out in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Palm Springs.
