Taking Woodstock (2009)

Stars: Demetri Martin and Liev Schreiber

Director: Ang Lee

Plugs: None

The title of the new film Taking Woodstock is an awkward amalgamation of the phrase “taking stock” (as in assessing a situation) with Woodstock, the most famous and influential rock concert in history. Taken together, the title suggests self-reflection amid the mud, chaos, flower power, and of course music that characterized the concert.

Taking Woodstock starts out well, as we see the sleepy Catskills town of Bethel, where a young kid named Elliot works with his hardworking parents who operate a motel that is about a step away from being condemned—if the bank doesn’t get it first. Desperate to fill the vacant rooms, Elliot eventually stumbles upon the idea of hosting an upcoming music festival nearby. And the rest, as they summarily say, is history—except that it’s not, because it’s all the things that went into pulling the concert off, all the things that almost went wrong, that make the story. Elliot’s neighbors aren’t enthusiastic about tens of thousands of hippies converging on the tiny town, though several of them (including one played by the always-watchable Eugene Levy) are happy to cash in on the hubbub.

Ang Lee, who helmed films such as Brokeback Mountain and The Ice Storm, tends to work with scripts that focus on one personal story within a specific cultural milieu. In this regard, Taking Woodstock is a natural choice. And for the first half of the film, it works. Screenwriter James Schamus wrote the film based loosely on Elliot Tiber's book “Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert and a Life.” The film deals, with some success, with themes such as growth, transformation, coming of age, idealism, and so on.

But at about the midway point, the script begins to falter, and seems unsure of its direction and focus. Most of the elements that made the first hour interesting seemed to evaporate just as the storm clouds and marijuana smoke filter in. The promoters, mafia henchmen, and other colorful characters are barely seen again as the movie shifts gears, slows down, and focuses on Elliot’s “journey.” The straight-laced kid loosens up, meets a hippie couple, and drops some acid in a van. Even his uber-serious parents, bless their crochety old Jewish hearts, are soon dancing jigs to the moon in their back yard, thanks to some funny brownies given to them by Elloit’s transvestite bodyguard (Liev Schreiber).

There’s nothing wrong with this, exactly, except that it’s been done a million times (anybody remember the scene in Revenge of the Nerds when straight-laced Poindexter gets high? I do!). The sense of place and time is impeccable—Woodstock was of course a product of its culture—and details such as the wretched New Agey naked dance troupe living in Elloit’s barn are fantastic. Because the film more or less ends when the concert starts, the film has surprisingly little actual Woodstock-era music, and audiences hoping for concert footage will be disappointed.

To be honest, the last third of the film is a mess. The screenwriter clearly wasn’t sure how to wrap things up—the hippies are here, Woodstock is almost ready, now what? — so we are treated to what seems like a cobbled-together ending that strains to include Elliot’s acceptance of his budding homosexuality and his struggle for acceptance from his father, and his desire to break free of his domineering mother, and oh yeah, there’s 200 naked hippies bathing in the pond and not enough toilet paper to go around. The problem is that Elliot’s personal life and parental issues simply isn’t that interesting, and the film works best with more Woodstock and less Taking.