Taking Woodstock (2009)

Now I remember why I wanted to be a hippie in like 4th grade. They're so much fun in the movies! Based on Elliot Tiber's autobiographical book, Taking Woodstock focuses on Elliot (Demetri Martin), a laid back interior designer and painter who feels compelled to help his financially-strapped parents Jake (Henry Goodman) and Sonia (Imelda Staunton) run their dump of a motel in upstate New York. He finds out about a little music festival some hippies are trying to throw a few towns over, and decides to offer them his family's land as a space after getting a license to have a music event. Zen-like organizer Michael Lang (Johnathan Groff) visits the site and instead decides to hold it on Max Yasgur's (Eugene Levy) farm down the road.

The motel becomes their base of operations and Elliot is sort of a community liaison, despite the fact that most of the townspeople hate him for bringing in a bunch of hippies. Thousands and thousands of people start showing up, especially after Elliot mistakenly says the event will be free in a press conference. His family is raking in money like crazy, enough that Elliot should be able to move to San Francisco with his friends and finally get out from the restrictive lifestyle his parents' forced on him. As the festival gets underway it becomes apparent that this is an event of unprecedented magnitude, and through Elliot's eyes we become privy to its effects (most of which aren't even related to the music).

Taking Woodstock is a breezy, easy-to-watch and easy-to-like movie. Demetri Martin plays a likable, average-joe kind of character. I liked how Elliot's homosexuality wasn't made into a huge deal, just a thing about him (as in, he isn't defined by his sexual preference), but it may have been treated too lightly in context of the time. I wasn't sure what Martin would be like as an actor and I was pretty impressed, and felt he did a good job as the personality connecting the multitude of characters. I dug most of the cast, though there are definitely way too many people in general. And despite the actual concert never being shown, there's a great use of music throughout, both as background and in montages. And drug use.

A good chunk of the movie seems an effort to capture the busy, friendly, and exciting atmosphere surrounding Woodstock, which meant an overuse of split screens to show a lot of things happening at the same time. It works once in a while, but gets a bit ridiculous the more Lee uses it. I could see what he was aiming for, but don't think he was successful all of the time. He definitely gets across how fun and good-natured all hippies apparently were, which is nice to watch. Overall the film is a cool and funny snapshot of this remarkable event (or some version of it, as I know there are varying reports on Elliot's story), with some fun characters and nothing too dramatic bringing it down. Also, lots of unsexual nudity.

4/5