Not many comedies reach the competition at Cannes but Taiwanese film-maker Ang Lee is used to breaking the mould and has done so here with a fictionalised account of the true story of the shambolic planning of 1969’s Woodstock Festival.
It’s an entertainment that’s not up to his best work but a complete change of pace from the intense dramatics of Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution.

The tale is based on the memoirs of Elliot Tiber, the young Greenwich Village interior designer who invented the famous three-day festival in order to save his parents rundown hotel from bankcruptcy. He had no idea that half-a-million young people would turn up and some of the kings and queens of rock would perform.
Lee has a serious point to make which runs parallel to his 1973-set The Ice Storm. If that was about the aftermath of flower power and hippiedom, Taking Woodstock is about the moment in time when the world seemed to be changing and everything seemed possible.

In the film most of the characters change, mostly for the better, as the festival’s organised chaos progressed towards success and virtually made the impossible come true. The film, which has Demetri Martin as Tiber and Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton as his irascible Jewish parents, indulges in most of the cliches of the time, like formerly hostile local cops with flowers in their helmets and an ex-Marine security officer who turns out to be a transvestite.

The best part of the entertainment has Tiber persuading suspicious locals who think hippies are devils to help him push his dream. The weakest has his parents succumbing to doctored brownies and himself attempting a drugged up threesome in one of the caravans. There are rather too many cheap laughs around and there’s not enough of the music, though songs from some of the original participants, such as Richie Havens and Janis Joplin are on the soundtrack.