Evidently Bill Clinton isn't the only one who doesn't inhale.

Irie212

This movie has its moments, but we don't come to really care about a single character in it, except for the brief roles played by Liev Schreiber and Emile Hirsch. And there is much more wrong with the movie than right, starting with the pointless split-screen sequences that director Ang Lee seems to have patented.

Factual accuracy is in doubt. His self-aggrandizing book aside, Elliott Tiber evidently had very little, if anything, to do with the staging of Woodstock at Max Yasgur's farm. As played by Demetri Martin (never heard of him? 'nuf said), he has no charm, no wit, no staying power.

Ironically, the strongest, most resonant moment is probably when the first (of very, very few) rock songs sound out-- Jim Morrison singing "Maggie M'Gill." Problem is, The Doors weren't at Woodstock, and that song came out the following year, on the 1970 "Live in Philadelphia" album. I'm a Doors fan, but why not use music from the three-day concert? None of it any good?

Nobody but nobody -- not then, not now, not ever-- smokes a joint as if it was a cigarette. I thought Bill Clinton was the only one who "didn't inhale" until I saw the characters in this movie.

Most dishonest moment of all: After ample nudity, full-frontal male and female, we get this: When Tiber finally wakes up with a male lover, he climbs out of bed wearing briefs. Ang Lee pours on the clichés about naked and/or inane drugged hippies, but when it comes to a bit of actual sexual reality, he's strictly Fruit of the Loom.

All of which I endured until the movie went formula: Tiber's parents are established early as old-fashioned (to say the least-- they're stock characters, stereotypical farm folk), so I feared they would end up tripping or stoned, the way so many stock characters start out cantankerous so they can be transformed and assimilated for the sentimental ending. And sure enough, the scene inevitably came: they both ate hash brownies and danced like pagans.

This is the last movie I'll see by Ang Lee. Hulk, Ice Storm, Brokeback Mountain, Ride With the Devil-- he can suck the energy out of anything, even sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll.

score 4/10

Irie212 27 August 2009

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2118058/