In 1969, Elliot Tiber, a semi-closeted gay interior designer lately relocated from Greenwich Village to his parents’ crumbling holiday resort in the Catskills, spotted a notice in the paper and offered the family motel as a home base for the promoters of Woodstock Ventures. The rest is history, but that hasn’t deterred director Ang Lee from attempting to recreate the whole shebang and the good vibes of high hippiedom.
Based on Elliot Tiber’s memoir, Taking Woodstock does not entirely shy away from the ickier aspects of sixties counter-culture; those pesky kids make one hell of a carbon footptint and the guys in suits are never very far away. This sweet, freewheeling vehicle doesn’t unduly concern itself with potential bummers. Ang Lee instead presents a Cinderella story; Mr. Tiber is transformed into Demetri Martin’s underappreciated son whose monstrous Russian émigré mother (Imelda Staunton) can’t quite come to terms with the avant garde theatre troop in the barn or any other innovations after 1945.
Their dysfunctional family unit is transformed by a storm of activity and a host of endearingly eccentric bit-players; Liev Schrieber’s Korean vet drag queen is a stand-out and watch out for Meryl Streep’s understated daughter, Mamie Gummer. Mostly, however, this is print-the-legend history, the warm, romantic glow of flower power dancing across the screen as a tonic for recessionary times.  This is no concert movie: the film pointedly lacks musical footage, as if to signal that Taking Woodstock historical recreation for anyone who ever shrugged ‘There was music at Woodstock?’