THE two significant movies this week are throwbacks to things past.Lee Ang's Taking Woodstock goes back to 1969 to the famous "three days of love and peace" of the Woodstock music festival.Surrogates, directed by Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3, U-571), transforms Bruce Willis into such a younger, unlined version - the man even has hair - that he looks like his own wax figure.
Both films, though, get stuck in something along the way and don't really take off. The bigger culprit is the unsatisfying, underachieving Taking Woodstock, which can't get out of the muddle of its own excess.That would be okay if you could actually see the legendary acts of the show - Hendrix, Joplin, The Who, et al.
But not a single one of the electrifying frontline is featured because the bloated excess the movie is concerned with is the less-cool backline - the frazzled organisers of the burgeoning- out-of-control gig.Somebody, you know, has to lend a rolling field for thousands and thousands of hippies to converge.
Man, I haven't seen a flick about so many people gathering since The Ten Commandments. The commandment in Lee Ang's Brokeback Mountian bible is that always in the midst of something big, there must be a reinstatement of the human condition, which is often something even bigger.
So while all hell is about to break loose, his main character, Elliot Tibber (TV comedian Demetri Martin), the shy, gay and indomitable spirit of the occasion, sniffs his own whiff of liberation. His cranky Jewish parents (Imelda Staunton is a standout as his irascible, money-minded mum) own a rundown motel in rural New York, which becomes the chaotic ad-hoc HQ for the big fest.
"You guys can do anything you want over here," Elliot, an old soul in the new Age of Aquarius, declares, handing the place over to the invaders - a bunch of phony capitalist-hippies - staging the event. The film, based on the real Elliot's memoirs, captures succinctly the unreal, unwashed madness of the moment as hordes of stoners, nudies, kooks, and freeloaders turn up.
It's like a making-of documentary about a little freak which grows into a monster. Here, the interestingly hectic build-up is the movie's own worst enemy. Almost like a tripped-up trip, the film gets done in by its own bad case of counterculture.
With his canvas painted and excitement poised, Lee's fragmented story goes spectacularly downhill, receding literally into the mud of boring numbness - it rained at the fest - which it cannot extricate itself from. More at home with just two people, Lee is no Robert Altman when it comes to dealing with multitudinous throngs.
"Go see what the centre of the universe looks like," somebody tells Elliot as he treads on the damaged, rampaged soil. Well, it's certainly not this movie. In the sci-fi Surrogates, Bruce Willis isn't taking Woodstock - he's basically taking stock.
He's a CGI-ed version of himself as a surrogate in a world full of make-believe people.In the near future, most of us miserable real folk will be lying down zonked out in our homes and plugged in to younger, prettier models of ourselves who'll live virtual, wonderful lives for us.
It's like Michael Jackson's dream world, but with robots instead of plastic surgery.Unfortunately, humans keep getting murdered in the show and FBI agent Willis investigates the dark deeds, which inevitably involve the top chain of the shady surrogacy business.
There is a commentary here about our addiction to youth, obsession with perfection, surrender to convention and the sad notion that most of us are unhappy with our lives.The story, based on a graphic- novel series, has grand pretensions, but remains a postage- stamp of an idea best suited to an episode of Twilight Zone.
You just get the feeling that you have seen this deal before.The great kick is seeing Willis as his own Ken doll for about half of the movie, complete with ridiculous hair.Oh, don't you worry about him.The real one can always go out and get a wig.
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