Taking Woodstock

On the face of it, from the trailer, this looks like it might be a movie about
how the Woodstock Festival came to happen. That isn't entirely correct.

It's a filming of Elliot Tiber's memoir *about* Woodstock. Tiber's involvement
in Woodstock appears to be that his parents owned the motel that the Woodstock
people used to organise the festival, that it was his initial invitation that
got the Woodstock people to come to White Falls, and that he was somewhat
involved on the periphery of the event, largely on the basis that he was
hanging around, and the Woodstock people were too polite to say "Oh do fuck off
Eliott, we're trying to organise a music festival here."

As such, this is more a coming of age film set against the background of
Woodstock. The overall effect is that there are any number of people in the
movie as peripheral characters whose stories would be much more interesting.
Tiber's sole value, in my view, is as a witness and recorder of what happened,
and to be honest, I don't think he saw an awful lot of the interesting stuff.
Overall, this is a film following the wrong man.

Also, the film is pretty guilty of foreshadowing stuff that doesn't happen. A
good example is, early in the film, a couple of mobsters turn up to attempt to
put a protection racket on the motel. Tiber is then approached by a
transvestite ex-marine (played by Liev Schrieber, who is a hoot) who says that
these mobsters are bad dudes, and that there's going to be trouble. And we
hear nothing at all about them. OK, so this is a movie based on fact, so
sometimes things don't have neat resolutions and callbacks. But it does kind of
make you feel like Tiber's memoir was wrung out for significant events, and
came up short.

It's not a bad film, it's competently made, well acted, but ultimately I felt
like I was watching an uninteresting story set against the backdrop of a much
more interesting one.