MOVIE: TAKING WOODSTOCK

I should preface this by saying that I still hold residual anger that I was born 30 years too late to go to Woodstock. So I jumped at the chance to catch Ang Lee’s latest, Taking Woodstock, the story of Elliot Tiber, accidental hero of that infamous festival. This film is never really about Woodstock, it’s about Elliot, and taken as such it plays as a sweet coming-of-age in ‘a time when everything was possible’. While those heading in hoping to see music, madness and the party of the century may be disappointed, this film bubbles along to its classic soundtrack with exuberance, featuring some show-stealing performances from Imelda Staunton as Elliot’s uptight mother and Liev Schreiber as the cross-dressing security. Great fun if not classic. (KB)