Film

It can’t be a good sign that during much of Taking Woodstock, we kept thinking how nice it would be to watch the concert film Woodstock again. Adapting Elliot Tiber’s book about his contribution to “three days of peace and music” (Tiber had a permit for a concert, which he transferred to the Woodstock organizers when they were thrown out of a nearby town), screenwriter James Schamus and Lee have created a rambling low-key comedy.

Martin brings his flat, affectless shtick to Elliot, an artist in his mid-twenties (the real Elliot was 34 in 1969) trapped in the Catskills helping his motel-owning parents. Mom (Staunton) is a skinflint, and Dad (Goodman) mostly grunts and suffers in comic silence. Good son Elliot struggles valiantly to keep their run-down business afloat. And then the concert promoters come to call.

Lee spends a lot of time on the wacky family, which is a shame, because the secondary characters are far more interesting. As concert promoter Michael Lang, Groff is far more interesting than Martin.

Lee and Schamus see all of this as an excuse for comedy based on fairly broad and potentially offensive types—stoned hippies, uptight locals, cheap Jews. If Woodstock is going to be the subject of a comedy, it ought to be funnier and on a grander scale than this gentle japery.