Examiner par giantpanther

As a fan of Ang Lee, Dimitri Martin, and Emile Hirsch I decided to ignore all of the reviews that said this movie wasn't that great. I hoped for the best that they were wrong, critics have been wrong before, so this wasn't all wishful thinking for me.

Anyways I was let down, this movie was cheesy it had all these moments that were supposed to be of great importance but they just didn't live up to that. This is one of those movies that really could have been great, it was knocking on the door of greatness but too many of the pieces didn't fit. I felt that a number of the actors thought that they were in a different film everyone was playing to their own beat and because of that we were left with a largely unbalanced movie.

One of the weakest links within this film was the role of Michael played by Johnathan Groff, I am not saying Groff isn't talented I think he did the best with what he was given but the part all in all was ridiculous. Its played out like Groff is some kind of omniscient at peace presence within the sixties movement, the pinnacle of a chilled out zen like figure head for the woodstock movement. To me this all came off as ridiculously contrived and unrealistic, every moment he was on screen I cringed at the awkwardness that was taking place.

This movie is stuffed full of underdeveloped characters. Really the only two characters I had any attraction to were the two acid people Elliot meets on his walk to woodstock. They seemed like the types you would have run into in that time.

My respect for Ang Lee has gone down a few notches, I cant help but to wonder if he realized mid filming that this film wasn't going to work. That it was going to be a decent film but not what he had hoped for. Emile Hirsch's part as a Vietnam vet gone crazy is well meaning but simply doesn't work, I will say Emile gave this role everything he could but at the end of the day it just wasn't very well written. And he wasn't given enough time to develop this person.

Its such a shame that this movie is bad, because I truly feel that it could have been a really fantastic film going experience if only handled in a slightly different manner, not focusing on people as such blatant clichés.

All of the actors try hard, but the writing and directing were pathetic on this film.