The year was 2000: VH1 released made-for-TV biopic Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story.
It was summer: a magical time when school is out, vacations, outdoor concerts, and festivals are happening, and the warm air on your skin makes it feel like anything is possible. Although the internet was still in it’s relative infancy–many people were still on dial-up, and cell phones were uncommon–there was a steady fervor online, an underlying current among Monkees fans that this movie was about to be released. In the late 90s, The Monkees had just finished up some tours and produced a new album, and solo shows for some of the Monkees continued. You could even find Monkees merch in popular, mainstream stores like Spencer Gifts and Contempo Casuals. Monkeemania was at a fever-pitch. What’s more, made-for-ogling boy bands like *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys were once again becoming the rage. So a biopic about The Monkees felt like the next step in part of the Monkees maturing careers, and Monkees fans were so excited. It was as if this had been a grassroots effort among fans to finally have this story told honestly and respectfully.
But I guess that was a poorly-worded request to the universe: because what came out, like so many previous situations circling around this community, was far less than what was desired or hoped for.
Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story was a story, to be sure–but not a story seemingly about The Monkees.
Daydream Believers was low-budget–but the real issue was that it was inaccurate. After thirty years of The Monkees legacy being tarnished by continuing misinformation about them, it was disheartening to see this movie was not doing much to stop that. While the main idea that “The Monkees started as a TV show that became a real band” is floated, the sloppiness of the storyline and the incorrect details made it embarrassing for fans to watch, and unhelpful to educate those who were not aware of this. It was clear corners were cut and a lot of stuff was just slapped together into patronizingly simplified, digestible tidbits of take-home messages. It even replaced The Monkees’ founders and producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider into characters “Van Foreman” and “Harris Green”–who are Van Foreman and Harris Green? No one knows [plus it made “Van,” who I assume to be “Bob,” out to be some kind of asshole with an anger-management problem]. The general target audience for the movie was also unclear–it contained concepts and language inappropriate for children, and yet was too sophomoric for adults. While The Monkees TV show so brilliantly offered something for everyone, Daydream Believers seemed to offer nothing to anyone.
Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly called the screenplay “full of missed opportunities.”
And don’t even get me started on the background music MIDI-file-esque synthesizer that accompanies most of the action scenes–picture an Angelfire.com hosted website from 1998 with animated GIFs, Comic Sans font, some kind of repeating celestial background, and an eerie, tin-sounding looping MIDI file, and you have the exact musical ambiance that this movie created. Painful.
But, if you can get past all that, the movie is kind of cute.
L.B. Fisher [Peter Tork], Jeff Geddis [Michael Nesmith], George Stanchev [Davy Jones], and Aaron Lohr [Micky Dolenz] did an absolutely fantastic job becoming their characters. They are such endearing actors who clearly respected their roles and cared to do right by the Monkees. In fact, it’s clear every actor in this movie really cared to do right by the Monkees and these roles meant a lot to them and their own acting careers. [And let’s not deny that everyone in this movie is very attractive–and while that’s not necessary, it’s never a bad thing.] Daydream Believers contained some of The Monkees’ greatest hits, “All Of Your Toys”, “I Wanna Be Free”, “Last Train To Clarksville”, “I’m A Believer”, “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone”, “The Theme To The Monkees”, and of course, “Daydream Believer”–which startlingly remind you what this movie is supposed to be about, and definitely help with the verisimilitude. And if you can move past the movie’s failure to move mountains and manage expectations, Daydream Believers does have an overall warm, feel-good vibe. Even the ending of the movie, which is once again a completely incorrect telling of real events, leaves us on the note that the Monkees really are good guys who just got caught up in a weird, weird, weird social experiment with TV and music.
But yeah, the whole movie is basically fiction.
And it’s currently free on Tubi if you’d like to watch it right now:
Watch Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story (2000).
🦋 Emily Wells