The final film by the great Robert Altman, A Prairie Home Companion, the big screen adaptation of Garrison Keillor's radio broadcast, showcases plenty of the director's strengths: it's got a gigantic cast and plenty of quirky acting and dialogue. Much like the radio show, Companion features clever jokes, rousing tunes, and endearing characters. With strong work from Lindsay Lohan, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Tommy Lee Jones, it's a worthy swan song from one of the cinema's best.
The final film by the great Robert Altman, A Prairie Home Companion, the big screen adaptation of Garrison Keillor's radio broadcast, showcases plenty of the director's strengths: it's got a gigantic cast and plenty of quirky acting and dialogue. Much like the radio show, Companion features clever jokes, rousing tunes, and endearing characters. With strong work from Lindsay Lohan, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Tommy Lee Jones, it's a worthy swan song from one of the cinema's best.
Acclaimed filmmaker Robert Altman (Short Cuts, Nashville) brings National Public Radio stalwart Garrison Keillor's long-running radio program to vivid life on the big screen in a intricately woven backstage fable centering on the final performance of a fictionalized version of his variety show. As if the result of some strange mass-media fluke, the popular radio program A Prairie Home Companion somehow managed to survive the television age to entertain its audience every Saturday night from the
stage of the historic Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, MN. Week after week, hangdog host Garrison Keillor serves as unflappable emcee to an amiable hodgepodge of radio-friendly acts that include the likes of popular country duo Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin) and singing cowboys the Old Trailhands (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly). This is one show where the under-the-line antics are nearly as entertaining as the program itself, though, and in between the efforts of down-on-his-luck private dick and backstage doorkeeper Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) to discover the true identity of a mysterious blonde (Virginia Madsen) and aspiring teen singer Lola (Lindsay Lohan) to find her true voice before a live audience, there's still plenty of fun and mystery to be had at the old Fitzgerald before the final curtain falls on A Prairie Home Companion. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
The movie, redolent of death, is a sort of wake, but a funny-sad one, teeming with music, corny jokes, and an ensemble of gifted performers who appear to be having an obscene amount of fun in one another's company.
It sparkles with a magic all its own as an engagingly performed piece of Midwestern whimsy and stoicism. Mr. Altman's flair for ensemble spectacle and seamless improvisation in the midst of utter chaos is as apparent as ever.
This is not one of the good Altmans. This isn't even one of the mediocre Altmans. No, the cinema's girl with the curl is back, and this time he's very, very bad.
Altman's star-studded cast is natural and energetic -- with the exception of a surprisingly detached Keillor -- and the Hollywood folks mingle easily, in character, among the real show's performers, a technique Altman perfected in Nashville.
...a lovely and bittersweet fable about morality, the fleetingness of fame, drawing strength from the past and finding the inevitable beauty in the darkest of situations.
In its neatest trick of all, the script circumvents any criticism of its lack of timeliness by very literally casting the proceedings under a shadow of death.
Found some of it funny and charming but given the talents involved I might have hoped for more. Some of the improvs seemed clumsy and I just didn't buy some of the characters. A little too much music?
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