{"id":3830,"date":"2024-03-27T04:02:17","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T08:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/?page_id=3830"},"modified":"2026-04-20T05:10:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T09:10:29","slug":"daydream-believers-the-monkees-story","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/monkees-a-la-episode\/daydream-believers-the-monkees-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The year was 2000: Bill Clinton was president, despite earlier impeachment. Most of America was on dial-up internet, and less than half of adults owned and used cell phones. Digital cameras were just beginning to come en vogue, most people still using Kodak and Fuji film cameras, having to wait to get their photos developed at camera stores, mall photo labs, CVS, and Fotomats. America had survived the Y2K crisis, and the tragically catastrophic Woodstock \u201999. And boy bands like *NSYNC, The Backstreet Boys, and Hanson were topping the charts with the newest, sexist teen-scene pop hits… <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a perfect time for VH1 to release the 1960s’ music and TV legends The Monkees’ made-for-TV biopic, Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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, there was a steady fervor online, an undercurrent among Monkees fans that this biopic that is about to be released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the late 90s, The Monkees had just finished up some tours and produced a new album, JustUs<\/em>. Solo shows for some of the Monkees also continued. TV channels like Nick At Nite and VH1 also ran The Monkees<\/em> show. You could even find Monkees merchandise in popular, mainstream stores like Spencer Gifts and Contempo Casuals. Monkeemania was once again, unexpectedly, at a fever-pitch. So a biopic about The Monkees felt like the next step in part of the Monkees maturing careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing is, in the ever-ironic life-imitating-art aspect of The Monkees canon, The Monkees’ story of their real lives surrounding the show and music had always been fraught with disrespect, corruption, predators, misfortune, and a public misunderstanding of the work while a judging society still somehow took from it what they wanted… People who cared about these men, the other professionals involved with the phenomenon, and the integrity of the actual facts behind this story, were eager to see the justice of a respectful biopic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, like so many previous situations, this was not that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story<\/em> was a story–but not a story about The Monkees<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After thirty years of The Monkees legacy being tarnished by continuing misinformation about them, this movie did not do much to change 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 the reality. It was clear corners were cut, and more complex information was 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<\/em> are Van Foreman and Harris Green?<\/em> 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. The Monkees TV<\/em> show tried so hard to entertain many different ages and demographics of audiences on multiple levels, while Daydream Believers<\/em> didn’t seem to try to do anything at all. While The Monkees <\/em>TV show so brilliantly offered something for everyone, Daydream Believers<\/em> seemed to offer nothing to anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly<\/a><\/em> called the screenplay “full of missed opportunities.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And don’t even get me started<\/em> 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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, if you can get past all that, the movie is kind of cute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. They seem like such good souls, and I hope the best for them in their acting careers or whatever they want to pursue in this universe. In fact, it’s clear every actor in this movie really cared to do right by The Monkees, and that these roles meant a lot to them and their own acting careers. I have nothing but love for them. [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.] <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daydream Believers<\/em> contained some of The Monkees’ greatest hits, “Last Train To Clarksville”, “I’m A Believer”, “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone”, “The Theme To The Monkees”, “I Wanna Be Free”, “All Of Your Toys”, and of course, “Daydream Believer”–songs which startlingly remind you what this movie is supposed to be about, and definitely help with the verisimilitude. [Although, come to think of it, they have the rights to those songs and still<\/em> used the MIDI files for the song romps??? I can’t…] . And if you can manage expectations, and move past the movie’s failure to move mountains, Daydream Believers<\/em> does have an overall warm, feel-good vibe. Even the ending of the movie, which is once again<\/em> a completely incorrect telling of real events [with movie-Michael Nesmith finding his movie-wife Phyllis in the hospital, when in real life Michael and Phyllis were Christian Scientists and refuse the use of hospitals and medical treatment because they believe prayer is the path to healing], 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. Which is also true, regardless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But yeah, the whole movie is basically fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it’s currently free on Tubi if you’d like to watch it right now:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story (2000)<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83e\udd8b Emily Wells<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The year was 2000: Bill Clinton was president, despite earlier impeachment. Most of America was on dial-up internet, and less than half of adults owned and used cell phones. Digital cameras were just beginning to come en vogue, most people still using Kodak and Fuji film cameras, having to wait to get their photos developed Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3989,"parent":1896,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3830","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3830"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6835,"href":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3830\/revisions\/6835"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1896"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveisonlysleeping.com\/monkees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}