Director Ang Lee revisits the '60s in "Taking Woodstock" and it's a modestly enjoyable time trip if not always a smooth ride.

The director of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" takes us behind the scenes of the legendary music festival as viewed through the eyes of a young man who helped bring the pop-culture milestone to Bethel, N.Y. The movie's based on a memoir by Elliot Tiber.

In the movie, Elliot Teichberg is a gay artist and interior designer who can't shake free of his parents in order to live his own life. Instead of moving to San Francisco like he wants to do, he keeps returning from New York City to his family's seedy and financially strapped motel in upstate New York.

Mother Sonia is a nightmare, a cantankerous and avaricious chronic complainer. Father Jake is a patient and devoted husband who suffers in silence. When Elliot discovers that promoters of a nearby music festival called the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair have been denied the necessary permits, he swings into action.

He persuades the promoters to come to his community because -- as the head of the chamber of commerce -- he can guarantee the necessary permits. Elliot sells the idea to promoter Michael Lang, offers the use of the motel for festival headquarters and persuades farmer Max Yasgur to rent out his cow pastures for the event's site. By this time, the locals are up in arms and Elliot is their main target. They don't want sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll to invade their bucolic lifestyle.

Lee and screenwriter James Schamus do a fine job of evoking the zeitgeist of the times. Naive optimism and a giddy sense of brotherhood course through the story culminating in Elliot's introduction to acid and free love.

Where the filmmakers stumble, however, is a tendency to stray into parody. Chief among the culprits are a goofy, avant-garde acting company living on the motel grounds and the character of Sonia played by Imelda Staunton. Sonia offers a glimpse of motivation for her awfulness but the rest is too much.

The other performances are far more believable.

Stand-up comic Demetri Martin is likable as the dutiful Elliot who finally liberates himself against the backdrop of Woodstock Nation. Liev Schreiber plays a wise, ex-Marine transvestite. Henry Goodman plays Jake, an understanding father. Eugene Levy plays Max Yasgur as a supportive but money-savvy farmer essential to the festival's success.

Jonathan Groff plays promoter Michael Lang, a secondary character but perhaps the movie's most charismatic. He gives the hippie entrepreneur a sense of puckish, beatific confidence.