> Taking Woodstock
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Demetri Martin, Imelda Staunton, Henry Goodman, Eugene Levy, Jonathan Groff, Emile Hirsch, Liev Schreiber, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Paul Dano, Kelli Garner, Mamie Gummer
Rating: (R16)
5 stars (out of 5)
Reviewed by Christine Powley
You have to be a real cinema buff to remember who Imelda Staunton is, but you only have to have seen her in Vera Drake, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and now Taking Woodstock (Rialto) to know that when she gets a part worth doing she can mesmerise you.
Here, she is the mother from hell, obsessively penny-pinching and running the family business to a standstill.
Her son Elliot (Demetri Martin) tries to do the right thing but his parents' motel is in a run-down part of the Catskills where all Elliot's business initiatives are doomed to fail.
A glimmer of hope opens when he hears that the permit for a big hippie concert at the next town has been cancelled. He volunteers his town and suddenly they are at the epicentre of the hippie freak show.
It should all end in tears, and in a lot of ways it did, but Woodstock also became the hippies' finest moment. This carefully crafted film takes its time getting to the great freak-out.
At first that annoys but then you realise for most people the experience of Woodstock was of chaos and not quite getting to the main event.
Elliot's story gives us the perspective of an outsider who is almost an insider. He was in at the birth but also free to ditch everything and mingle with the crowds grooving to the scene.
Best thing: Imelda Staunton is a genius and by the end director Ang Lee makes you feel as if you did go to Woodstock after all.
Worst thing: It is a slow starter but fortunately Staunton's crazed mother is at hand to kick-start mayhem.
See it with: Flowers in your hair.
