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Movies / On DVD / Taking Woodstock
Taking Woodstock

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Taking Woodstock (2009)

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Reviews Counted:165

Fresh:81

Rotten:84

Average Rating:5.5/10

Consensus: Featuring numerous 60s-era clichés, but little of the musical magic that highlighted the famous festival, Taking Woodstock is a breezy but underwhelming portrayal.

Rated: R [See Full Rating] for graphic nudity, some sexual content, drug use and language.

Runtime: 1 hr 50 mins

Genre: Comedies

Theatrical Release:Aug 28, 2009 Wide

Box Office: $7,366,736

Synopsis: A generation began in his backyard. From Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), comes Taking Woodstock, a new comedy inspired by the true... A generation began in his backyard. From Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), comes Taking Woodstock, a new comedy inspired by the true story of Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin) and his family, who inadvertently played a pivotal role in making the famed Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the happening that it was.

It's 1969, and Elliot Tiber, a down-on-his-luck interior designer in Greenwich Village, New York, has to move back upstate to help his parents run their dilapidated Catskills motel, The El Monaco. The bank's about to foreclose; his father wants to burn the place down, but hasn't paid the insurance; and Elliot is still figuring how to come out to his parents.

When Elliot hears that a neighboring town has pulled the permit on a hippie music festival, he calls the producers, thinking he could drum up some much-needed business for the motel. Three weeks later, half a million people are on their way to his neighbor's farm in White Lake, NY, and Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life, and American culture, forever. --© Focus Features [More]

Starring: Demetri Martin, Emile Hirsch, Liev Schreiber, Imelda Staunton

Starring: Demetri Martin, Emile Hirsch, Liev Schreiber, Imelda Staunton, Eugene Levy, Dan Fogler, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Director: Ang Lee

Director: Ang Lee
Screenwriter: James Schamus
Producer: James Schamus, Ang Lee, Celia Costas
Composer: Danny Elfman
Studio: Focus Features

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Release:

Dec 15, 2009

[DVD Details]
 
 

DVD Features:

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Reviews for Taking Woodstock

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41 - 60 (sorted by date)
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Taking Woodstock is enormous fun.

Full Review Source: About.com | comment Comment
08/29/09
Marcy Dermansky
Marcy Dermansky
About.com

Aside from a few electric moments this is mostly a slow-moving, flat and unimpressive film.

Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews | comment 1 Comment
08/29/09
Dennis Schwartz
Dennis Schwartz
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

This Borsht Belt turned Bacchanalian screen memoir suffers from persistent peripheral vision of a historic moment, while dulling the senses with an overload of housekeeping details. Not exactly a bad trip, but in no way a time travel contact high.

Full Review Source: NewsBlaze | comment Comment
08/29/09
Prairie Miller
Prairie Miller
NewsBlaze

You won't get wasted, but your money won't wither.

Full Review Source: Richmond.com | comment Comment
08/29/09
Mike Ward
Mike Ward
Richmond.com

Dramedy revisits famous festival, complete with drugs, sex.

Full Review Source: Common Sense Media | comment Comment
08/28/09
S. Jhoanna Robledo
S. Jhoanna Robledo
Common Sense Media

It seems that Lee and Schamus had no idea what it was they wanted to say here. Did Woodstock matter? Does anyone care?

Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid | comment 1 Comment
08/28/09
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid

I needed to take a shower after just watching the film.

Full Review Source: 7M Pictures | comment Comment
08/28/09
Kevin Carr
Kevin Carr
7M Pictures

Though intermittently amusing and exhilarating, Taking Woodstock can't quite pull together its threads into one totally trippy tapestry.

Full Review Source: E! Online | comment Comment
08/28/09
Matt Stevens
Matt Stevens
E! Online

a limp attempt to stage a story around the most historic concert ever and then treat the concert as a background echo to the predictable melodrama on center stage.

Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | comment 3 Comments
08/28/09
Jason McKiernan
Jason McKiernan
Filmcritic.com

Too much of Taking Woodstock seems barely sketched out.

Full Review Source: Newark Star-Ledger | comment 1 Comment
08/28/09
Stephen Whitty
Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Dear-hearted but fuzzy in a way that unintentional mirrors the hippie aesthetic of the Woodstock festival, Lee's film is interested not so much in the massive concert as in the Catskill Mountains community which hosted it, however unwillingly.

Full Review Source: Oregonian | comment 2 Comments
08/28/09
Shawn Levy
Shawn Levy
Oregonian

It's harmless enough as a snapshot of a young man's awakening to the grand possibilities of adult life, but not particularly effective at capturing the spirit, the thrill or even the mud of this culturally monumental event.

Full Review Source: Salon.com | comment Comment
08/28/09
Stephanie Zacharek
Stephanie Zacharek
Salon.com
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

So easy to get behind thematically and one with fascinating subject matter, but it's a movie that never gets over some of the stereotypes of its subject matter to present a fully-formed, relatable, human drama.

Full Review Source: Movie Retriever | comment Comment
08/28/09
Brian Tallerico
Brian Tallerico
Movie Retriever

This is very light material, and, unusually for a Lee picture, not everybody in the ensemble appears to be acting in the same universe, let alone the same story. On the other hand: It’s fun.

Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune | comment Comment
08/28/09
Michael Phillips
Michael Phillips
Chicago Tribune
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Taking Woodstock has the appeal of an inside story told from an especially good angle. But beyond that, the movie is a celebration of the way this event has gone into memory and of the meaning it has acquired.

Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | comment Comment
08/28/09
Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

It's great that Taking Woodstock doesn't trample on anything sacred, but it also never arrives anywhere interesting.

Full Review Source: New York Daily News | comment Comment
08/28/09
Joe Neumaier
Joe Neumaier
New York Daily News

Taking Woodstock doesn't show anyone performing at the 1969 concert event, an intriguing choice that also works as a metaphor for the woebegone film. It never gets where it's going, either.

Full Review Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press | comment Comment
08/28/09
Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
St. Paul Pioneer Press

Lee's first total miscalculation, his first wholly inessential film.

Full Review Source: TIME Magazine | comment 1 Comment
08/28/09
Richard and Mary Corliss
Richard and Mary Corliss
TIME Magazine

Can you dig it? Maybe, if you aren't already up to your tie-dyed shorts in Woodstock memories, and if you can accept that there's relatively little music in this happy-go-lucky movie about history's most celebrated music festival.

Full Review Source: Toronto Star | comment Comment
08/28/09
Peter Howell
Peter Howell
Toronto Star
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

For any teenager tempted to sneer at Mom and Dad’s veneration of the whole Woodstock thing, this film explains why those three days in 1969 had such a profound effect on a generation.

Full Review Source: Kansas City Star | comment Comment
08/28/09
Robert W. Butler
Robert W. Butler
Kansas City Star
 
 
41 - 60 (sorted by date)
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Latest News for Taking Woodstock

November 13, 2009: James Schamus talks Taking Woodstock - RT Interview
James Schamus might be a workaholic. If it's not enough that he's the head of Focus Features -- the independent imprint of Universal -- he's also an established producer and... More...

November 12, 2009: Five Favourite Films with Ang Lee
The rule that no two Ang Lee movies are ever the same is confidently kept intact with the release of his latest, Taking Woodstock, a comedy about the true story behind the... More...

August 27, 2009: Critics Consensus: Guess Halloween 2's Tomatometer!
This week at the movies, we've got the return of Michael Myers (Halloween 2, starring Malcolm McDowell and Scout Taylor-Compton), three dimensional fatalities (The Final... More...

August 27, 2009: Box Office Guru Preview: Fans Choose Sides in Horror Showdown
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