Ang Lee’s "Taking Woodstock" is a pathetically small film about what was a huge historical event.

The movie centers around the life of Elliot Tiber and his family’s accidental involvement in the biggest rock concert of all time. Instead of focusing on the event that is the movie’s namesake, however, Lee filled the theater screen with nearly two hours of typical Jewish stereotypes and minimal shots of the actual concert.

By the end of the movie, nothing is resolved; all that’s known is that there was no character development and no identity as a film.

That is not to say there was little effort put into this movie, but the scenes that obviously had the most effort in them were minor scenes that could have been left out completely. It is understood that with Woodstock comes drugs and sex, but Lee went about portraying these in a way that didn’t work with the story.

The main character, played by Demetri Martin, tried LSD in a van with strangers, typical Woodstock-esque happening. But the majority of the actually concert is completely out of the camera shots.

When a director takes on a film for an event like Woodstock, they need to show some of the Woodstock concert. Instead of viewing the excitement of the concert and the shenanigans that all the participants endured, viewers are forced into watching two hours of back story and minor happenings. Nine out of ten times Woodstock is shown, all it is is a gold hue off in the distance hidden by whatever minor story is in the fore- ground. The 1970s camera angles also are a failure. Ang Lee made the film look very amateur and hard to watch. Most of the film is about the Tibor family, which is fine, except this is the majority of the film. This would be acceptable if Lee actually brought something to the table with this; he did nothing new. He has taken Elliot Tibor’s memoir of the magnificent experience and cracked one too many Jewish jokes. The parents are immigrants from Russia but Lee can’t seem to leave that fact alone.

He creates dumb, slow, stereotypical Jewish parents who can’t even communicate their needs. If they were really this terrible at the American way, though, then how were they able to make their way into the motel business in the first place? Lee lost the story in his attempt to create "funny" characters.

As a whole, it is an abomination, but if picked apart to try and fine solace in the characters and side stories, you might as well spoon your eyes out because that would accomplish more than any part of this movie did.

Lee’s directing downplayed a major historical event and in turn, made a misleading film.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars