Directed by: Ang Lee
Starring: Henry Goodman, Emile Hirsch, Demetri Martin, Liev Schreiber, Imelda Staunton
Rating: R

Demetri Martin (left) and Liev Schreiber star in Taking Woodstock. (Courtesy photo)

As an evocation of a seminal time and place, Ang Lee’s new film Taking Woodstock is a masterpiece. As cohesive filmed storytelling, it’s pretty lame. However, the exuberance and good will with which Lee and company revisit the legendary concert makes Taking Woodstock a very enjoyable bit of lameness. It’s as if the easygoing, indefatigably optimistic attitude of those who put together and attended the concert permeated the entire movie. The question is, will that same wave of joy reach the audience? In my case it did.

While the movie itself is far from the risk-taking of Brokeback Mountain or Lust/Caution, Lee has gambled on his leading man, TV personality Demetri Martin. Martin plays too-nice guy Elliot Teichberg. Elliot has returned home to his small town of Bethel, N.Y., to help keep the family motel afloat. Mother Sonia (Imelda Staunton) is too cheap to clean the linens after a single-night stay, and father Jake (Henry Goodman) seems content to shuffle around behind his wife. Elliot’s grand ambitions can be seen everywhere around the rundown motel—signs for the future spa, casino, and more. When Elliot learns that the town of Woodstock has kicked out a big music festival, he invites them to Bethel. The event throws the entire town into disarray and brings an endless succession of new experiences into Elliot’s orbit.

Many characters are introduced, and most are left by the wayside. There’s Dan Fogler’s delightfully authentic theater company, living in the motel barn and performing a very contemporary, very nude take on Three Sisters. There’s recent Vietnam-discharged Billy (Emile Hirsch), suffering from flashbacks, much to the embarrassment of his big brother (Watchmen’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan, in a part that must have once been bigger). One enjoyable late entry is Liev Schreiber as Vilma, a transvestite who supplies much-needed security at the motel. Vilma’s role is really to monitor Elliot’s dad, who has become disturbingly happy.

And that’s about as deep as things get: the arrival of a million hippies makes a collection of tightly wound people begin to unwind. Even that simple a story might have been more satisfying had Lee and collaborator James Schamus followed through on them. Instead, they leave Elliot to do the heavy lifting, and the very likable Martin just isn’t up to it. Martin is charming and sharp on his Comedy Central series, Important Things with Demetri Martin, but this was a bit too big a leap. It doesn’t help that Schamus’ script is oddly ham-fisted. Even the marvelous Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) can’t turn her Russian-Jewish mother into a three-dimensional character. And Goodman, a highly regarded British stage actor, is trapped in a comical stereotype. The brothers played by Hirsch and Morgan don’t really go anywhere, Fogler’s troupe sinks into the background, and Schreiber’s Vilma is a standard angel with eternal patience.

There’s nothing wrong with telling this particular based-on-a-true story with such a soft touch. The challenge is reconciling the style to the creative team. Everyone knows there’s a more meaningful take on this event to be told, and one would expect Lee and Schamus to find it. Still, the visual reconstruction is astounding. Many times I thought I was viewing real footage from Woodstock, only to see Demetri Martin wandering through it. As someone who’s never had a strong connection to that event, watching Taking Woodstock sure made me want to have been there.

Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard readers for many years.