Taking Woodstock tells the story of how a small town took on a giant project hosting one of the biggest music festivals of all time. It’s directed by Ang Lee who has previously brought us Hulk / Brokeback Mountain, and stars Demetri Martin, Dan Fogler, Henry Goodman, Jonathan Groff and Eugene Levy.
The movie starts off with struggling motel owners (Martin, Staunton & Goodman) fighting to stay afloat with increasing debts and no hope of escape from the looming bank managers. When Elliot hears on the radio that a festival in neighbouring town has failed to get a permit, he starts thinking maybe this is an event that his town can host. From here, we’re taking on the ‘based on a true story’ journey of Taking Woodstock which are focused around the memoirs of Elliot Tiber.
I liked the look of this movie from the trailer and was hoping for good things. For the first 30 minutes, i’d say that I got them with Imelda Staunton, Goodman and Martin all delivering excellent and comedic dialogue that had me laughing out loud. Unfortunately after those minutes were up, the movie just glides along where not a great deal happens and the laughs disintegrate into something that becomes pretty poor.
After the initial story has been told, we seem to get stuck as an audience not really knowing where to be taken. We see an awful lot of people coming to the event with some great stock footage but after the thousands upon thousands of people have arrived, the movie never really goes anywhere. One example is when Martin’s character, Elliot decides to go to the festival and gets pulled into a tent where around 10 minutes of screen-time are used to show him getting drugged up. I got bored pretty quickly! There a moments of humour when Liev Schreiber’s character turns up but even he didn’t do enough to revive the latter half of the movie.
I think this movie is going to be a good one to rent on DVD and I’m sure some people out there will love this movie to find out more about how Woodstock has become one of the biggest festivals ever. But it wasn’t really for me I’m afraid.
Taking Woodstock is available on iTunes from today and DVD and Blu Ray from next Monday, 8th March. We currently have a competition running for 3 readers to win it on DVD here.
