Cannes 2009 Day 3: Nothing Psychedelic about Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock

It wasn’t too difficult to join a commune, pin flowers in your hair and drop your clothes for a lot of young people living in the U.S. in the summer of 1969, but if you came from a Jewish family laying a hard guilt trip on you, then coming out as a gay man was harder than pulling off the 2nd most important event in music history (I’m guessing Elvis and the Beatles hitting the Ed Sullivan show are number one). With a screenplay that is crafted as a huge traffic jam of intersecting characters, Taking Woodstock comically examines a coming of age scenario for an adult, with parallel storylines between a small village that is bursting at the seams, and the film’s lead player, a young entrepreneur who tries to fit big city business model to his family’s almost deceased motel business. With the only true bright spot of the film pertaining to Imelda Staunton‘s perf (particularly her accent), Taking Woodstock feels as artificial as the anniversary edition of Woodstock did just a couple of years back. You can’t recreate the magic no matter what entry point POV you use. Re-creating mudslides, obligatory LSD trips with heightened colors, and the constant homage to Michael Wadleigh’s docu shows that this lacks both character and a purpose. Old hippies will insure this has wings opening weekend, but I doubt anyone will truly trip on this picture. Full Review Coming Soon.