Taking Woodstock: Review

Some directors feel very safe in one or two genres, but not Ang Lee. He bounces around different styles of movies and on the most front are successful (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Brokeback Mountain; Lust, Caution). Lee now tackles small town Americana comedy with this trip back to the 60s, but this is a film of two halves.

Elliot (Demetri Martin) is an artist and designer whose every penny goes to trying to save his Russian immigrant parents' failing motel business in the Catskills. The business is close to closure as the bank wants to foreclose, so Eliot persaudes them for more time, in order that his annual music festival can go ahead and he can raise the money needed. Then, a nearby town turns down the idea of a hippie festival, and Eliot can see a possiblity  and steps in to get the festival staged at his motel, not realising that this was going to turn int Woodstock, the biggest and most famous music festival ever.

When i say it's a film of two halves, I mean before the festival and during. The first half introduces us to the key characters, particualrly uptight Eliot, a man who takes life far too seriously, and his problematic parents, the firey mother, brilliantly played by Imelda Staunton, and his put-upon father, British theatre legend Henry Goodman. Their scenes are the funniest, particularly when Staunton is stomping around the place. There's also the troop of actors living in the barn that raised some big laughs. Caught up is the weird and pretentious, they are a real giggle. The organisation scenes are also very interesting, as the mix of business men and hippies try to thrash out the deals with Eliot and his neigbour, Max (Eugene Levy), the local dairy farmer whose field they want to use, and who produces the finst chocolate milks around.

The film fails in the second half when the festival kicks off. We get plenty of scenes of the town invasion by the millions of free-spirited youngsters but not a real feel of the festival itself. The music, which seemed so important, i hardly featured at all, and two scenes, one in which Eliot rides the back of policebike while passing the line of arrivals, and Eliot's experiences with acid, go on far too long and slows the film down almost to a stop.

There are some high points. Liev Schreiber, and actor who normally gets on my nerves, comes across well as the transvestite security, and Lee's eye for detail is simply in a bygone age, like his 70s film The Ice Storm, is brilliant. Alas, he has forgotten that we are to be taken on a complete journey, and Eliot's seem to be more about discovering his sexuality and being a little more chilled, which cannot carry a film along.

So the first half gets a four star: with the big laughs coming in the first hour. The stars drop because of the second part, which is a pity as this had so much potential