By Tay Yek Keak

TAKING WOODSTOCK (R21)
Drama/120 minutes
Score: 2.5/5

SURROGATES (PG)
Sci-fi thriller/89 minutes
Score: 3/5

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.

Quick Takes

FUNNY PEOPLE (M18)
Dramedy/146 minutes
Score: 2.5/5

IN THIS Judd Apatow rambler, Adam Sandler goes serious again as a dying comedian who takes on a new best friend (Seth Rogen) to make up for having been a jerka**.

The film is purposeful at first, but cops out with a silly trip to the suburbs in pursuit of Sandler's redemptive former love (Leslie Mann).

Funniest person here is Eric Bana as her thick Aussie hubby. - TYK

PAPER HEART (PG)
Comedy/88 minutes
Score: 3/5

THIS is a quasi-documentary - the interviews are real - where super-dorky Asian comedienne actress Charlyne Yi goes around asking people what love is.

Playing a fictionalised version of herself, she - a self-confessed no-hoper - finds love with then real-life boyfriend Michael Cera (Juno).

Cutesy movie tends to drag but is saved by Yi's quirky charm, none more so than when she hangs out in a redneck-biker bar. - TYK

THE MESSAGE (NC16)
Drama/124 minutes
Score: 3.5/5

ZHOU Xun, Li Bingbing and Zhang Hanyu are high-ranking Japanese collaborators locked up in an isolated Chinese fortress by a ruthless Japanese commander (Huang Xiaoming).

He goes worse than Dick Cheney in the torture chamber to smoke out a spy among them.

An overwrought, melodramatic World War II parlour game which is, however, never boring. Great acting. - TYK

INVITATION ONLY (R21)
Horror/95 minutes
Score: 2/5

TAIWAN'S answer to slashergore Hostel is a rip-off which shows that Asians can chop limbs, electrocute genitals, staple heads and splash a lot of tomato-sauce blood too.

What is our neighbourhood coming to when it copies totally alien fads already passe?

A group of people gets invited to a fancy party not knowing that they will be dismembered for sick fun.

What? They haven't been to a Chinese restaurant? - TYK

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