Taking Woodstock

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Bert C Most reviewers seem to miss the point of this film. The music festival is the backdrop, not the story. If you want the festival, watch "Woodstock". This story is the serendipitous opportunity of hosting the festival and its impact on Elliot: the naivety, the discovery, the thrill. And it accomplishes all this with warmth and empathy. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 05/13/25 Full Review dave s Taking Woodstock is a bit of a puzzling and disappointing entry in Ang Lee's impressive filmography. Set in upstate New York in 1969, Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin) returns home to help his parents manage their rundown rural motel. Before you can say ‘groovy', Elliot becomes instrumental in bringing the Woodstock music festival to Max Yasgur's (Eugene Levy) farm, saving the family business and alienating himself from the town-folk. Despite its lofty ambitions, the movie is plagued by scenes that run far too long (Elliot dropping acid), characters that exist only to be quirky (the trans security guard and the annoying, barn-dwelling Earthlight Players, etc.), and scenes that serve no purpose. Billed as a comedy, there are few, if any, laughs and none of the film feels like it's genuinely 1969. Martin is solid in the lead role and Jonathan Groff is convincing as the iconic organizer Michael Lang, but the rest of the movie is reminiscent of Woodstock's infamous brown acid – it's just a bad trip. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Audience Member To be honest I actually enjoyed this movie . I guess the hate is because it didn’t focus that much on the music itself but more the organization of the festival but it was still neat to see and sent me down a Woodstock wormhole 3.5 Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 11/12/20 Full Review Audience Member I liked this movie so much that I bought the book. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Audience Member The best thing about this movie is that it is visually compelling and conveys a vivid sense of place. Aside from that, it's rather weak. The character of the mother and father are such extreme stereotypes that they are impossible to take seriously. One doesn't learn anything for viewing them or their interactions with the other characters. I'm actually astounded that the screenwriter, who must have worked so hard on other aspects of the screenplay, allowed himself to settle for these two cardboard cutouts (and they are such prominent characters, too). Like many so-called "indie" films of the last ten years, the film is multiclimactic, meaning that it chooses not to have a single, compelling narrative arc (unfortunately, many writers now consider that old fashioned), but, rather, once the setting and the premise have been established, the film just rambles like a country road winding through the hills. There are at least three different moments that could be considered "turning points." This is also a characteristic of these recent "indie" films: they throw "turning points" at you so often (more than once is risky) that you lose sense of how important they actually are. (The editors try to compensate for this by using dramatic music to tell you how you¿re supposed to be feeling.) I guess the new generation of writers feel that these characteristics are liberating. But I think they make for boring, indecisive, pompous, forgettable films. After seeing "Taking Woodstock," I had the same feeling I had after seeing "Where the Wild Things Are" and nearly every film by Wes Anderson: first, that I'd been served a lot of sauce with no spaghetti , and second, on the following day, I didn't think about the film for one second. No scene stuck in my mind, nor line of dialog; and I felt no desire to talk about or see the film ever again. Rated 1.5/5 Stars •  Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 02/10/23 Full Review Audience Member kind of biased because i grew up 10 minutes from where woodstock was....but it was still fantastic. Bought the dvd and it will sit firmly in my collection Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/25/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Taking Woodstock

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