At the Movies

by Esther McCarthy

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FESTIVAL FAILS TO PULL A CROWD

TAKING WOODSTOCK (16): starstar

TALL ORDER: Demetri Martin (right)THE STARS: Demetri Martin, Imelda Staunton, Emile Hirsch, Eugene Levy.

THE STORY: When a young designer named Elliot (Martin) hears the organisers of a music festival are looking for a home, he sees an opportunity to bring rock to his quiet upstate town and help save his parents' ailing hotel business. Little does he know that 100,000 people are already planning to head to Woodstock.

JUST like a hippie on LSD, this movie of the story behind Woodstock wanders around with no sense of purpose. It's a shame, because director Ang Lee has proved his pedigree in the past with succesful films like Brokeback Mountain.

Based on a memoir by Elliot Tiber, the film focuses on Tiber's involvement in bringing the festival to upstate New York - and how they very nearly took on much more than they could handle.

Tiber was a trendy designer whose parents owned a run-down motel in the town of Bethel - and when he heard that festival organisers had been kicked out of another village - he quickly put together a plan of action.

He introduces concert organisers to Max Yasgur, on whose farmland Woodstock took place, and tries to convince locals it will be the making of the town rather than the breaking of it.

Lee has attracted a talented cast here including Imelda Staunton, Liev Schreiber and Eugene Levy, and it's obvious that he and his actors have an affection for Woodstock and its place in musical and cultural history.

Problem is, they fail to transfer that affection onto the big screen. There's no sense of occasion either and bizarrely - given the quantity and quality of rich pickings - the movie declines to focus on either a strong soundtrack or any of the action on stage.

THE VERDICT: It looks pretty but unfortunately this is a movie with very little personality, and crucially, it fails to really create a sense of time and place.

Ang Lee is a bit all over the place with this effort and sadly fails to recapture the idealism of life during the 1960's.

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