Movie Review: Taking Woodstock

Something about this poster just feels misleading to me… 

Taking Woodstock is a movie, based on a book by Elliot Tiber which is based upon the true story of how the Woodstock Festival came to be.  Woodstock is the only part of history I’m a little bit bitter I missed.  Sure, I mean it’s awesome how I’m not in my fifties now, but I will be one day, and despite the sequels when I was a kid, I can’t look back and say, “I might be old now, but at least when I was young, I went to Woodstock.”  Coolest thing I can say is, “I might be old now, but I watched a lot of movies, documentaries, and specials about Woodstock.”

Having such a passion for this one historical event that happened before I was born – and don’t judge me, everyone has one – I didn’t know what to think of this movie.  I saw Eugene Levy attached and I knew that I’d either love it or decide to hate Woodstock altogether.  With Eugene Levy, I either love the movie, or hate it with such a passion I want to go back in time and kill the grandfathers of that movie’s execs.  Either way, I can’t think of a movie with Eugene Levy in it that I think, “Hmm… this is mediocre.”  I love the man, but that’s just the way it works.  Spoiler alert: This movie does not in any way change my opinion of Eugene Levy’s affect on films.  Another spoiler alert: I really do spoil the hell out of this movie.

So, basically, the story goes like this.  Elliot Tiber’s parents can’t run a motel to save their lives.  I mean, I’ve been to crappy motels, but the way they were running this thing.  The mother wouldn’t even wash the sheets if nobody had sex on them because she didn’t want to pay for the electricity and water to wash them.  To help save the motel, Elliot plans on having a live music festival, with a string quartet.  He has a neighbor up the street, Max Yasgur, who loves these festivals.  Elliot’s sister tries to convince him to move to California, but Elliot feels too attached to his parents, and like a captain, does not abandon his sinking ship.

Wallkill, a neighboring city, was supposed to have Woodstock, but they decide to kill it and pull the permit.  Elliot learns about this and decides to jump on the opportunity.  He gets in contact with the Woodstock organizers and tells them he can help them out.

To be honest, I forget what this scene is, but here’s Michael Lang and Elliot Tiber.

The Woodstock organizers show up, and the first thing they notice is they can’t have a concert on a swamp, so Elliot refers them to Max’s farms.  Max agrees to have the festival on his farm.  Some of the locals are not pleased to have so many hippies coming to the town, but neighboring hotel owners are very pleased because of the business coming in.  Many businesses in White Lake do warm up to economic pick up the festival brings to them, but still some remain angry.

Other problems arise, but they all seem trivial because of how quickly they’re solved in the movie.  The only one worth mentioning is when the mafia comes to try to get protection money from the Tibers, but the family chases the mafia off.  Just after, Elliot meets Vilma, an ex-Marine transvestite who saw what happened and offers his services in protection.  Elliot hires him immediately.

Vilma is like one of the top 10 characters in cinema of all time.

Then Woodstock happens.  Some of the townspeople are still angry, but it wasn’t like anyone could force half a million people to leave.  As anybody who’s ever heard of Woodstock knows, the festival lasts for three days.  On the first day, Vilma and Elliot’s father convince Elliot to go to the concert.  A cop gives him a ride there, but he never even makes it all the way up the hill.  Instead, he drops acid with some couple in a VW (bus, for those who were confused and thought I might mean a Cabriolet).

The second day is the same as the first.  On the second day, Elliot goes with his Vietnam friend Billy, but instead of getting over the hill, they go sliding in the mud.  It looked fun, really, but I mean… you can play in the mud any time, there’s an epic and historical concert going on behind you!  Also on the second day, Elliot’s got wasted off of special brownies.  The next morning, the family discovers that Elliot’s mother had hidden $97,000 from the family.

The third day, there were technical problems, and then the festival was over.  Everyone packed up to leave, including Elliot.  Elliot’s father pulls him aside to tell him that the festival helped him to be alive again, and he wanted his son to be able to feel alive, too.  When Elliot asked his father how he could live with his mother, his father replies, “I love her.”  I just thought that was sweet.

This is the coolest thing Elliot did at the Woodstock festival.

Elliot heads back over to Yasgur’s farm and heads over the hill.  Though the musicians are gone, the stage still stands and everyone is helping to clean up.  Mike, one of the organizers, talks with Elliot, and when Elliot tells him his plans, he tells him about a truly free concert being planned in San Francisco with the Rolling Stones.  While he sounds hopeful and confident about it, I want you all to look up “Altamont Free Concert,” if you don’t already know what it is.  I knew what it was, but only because I heard it in my pop music a few years ago and looked it up.

So, basically, that’s the movie.  I thought it was interesting, and another perspective of the world’s most famous, most influential rock concert of all time.  Three days of peace, love, and music took a lot of planning and organizing, it turns out.  I want to say it wasn’t all, “Everyone just show up”, but it really did turn into that, but before that there was a fair deal of planning and organizing.  I give this movie four stars.  It didn’t make me feel like I was at Woodstock, but it gave me another level of appreciation for it – the organizational side.

It lost a star for never showing any of the bands.