"A Prairie Home Companion" is a sweet adaptation of Garrison Keillor's radio show. Much as director Robert Altman adds his trademark ensemble dialogue touches, it is strictly for fans. I have been one for decades ever since I caught it on the car radio and mistook it for just this kind of old-fashioned radio program that appears like Brigadoon out of the ether from the opening shot of transmission towers as night falls, just as I used to catch variety shows at night on my AM transistor radio, like WWVA's Country Jamboree, that still airs at the same time as Keillor's.
Unlike the show's brief stint on the Disney Channel (satirized effectively on "The Simpsons" as too cerebral humor for television) or the recent version of some of the same songs and skits from the film on PBS's "Great Performances", this is not just a film of the broadcast, which I've seen in person twice (once at its home base as shown here at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul and once on the road in NYC where I remember the participants running around more frantically just in time to sound casual on the air), but a tribute to the kind of show that inspired it.
Keillor's own script, not dissimilar in plot to a Muppets movie, has regular characters from his stories appear, with mixed effectiveness, as real people, literally or as types. Though there is only elliptical reference to Lake Woebegone, Kevin Kline is gumshoe "Guy Noir", Virginia Madsen is an angel of intersecting coincidences (with an ironic joke about NPR driveway moments), and Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are funnier and more musically talented ersatz cowboy duo "Dusty" and "Lefty", respectively, than we usually hear. Instead of Keillor's monologue all at once, we get a running joke of pieces of his drawn-out explanation of how he got started in radio.
Who raises the film to larger interest is Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin playing a sister singing duo. Not only are they magical masters of Altman's overlapping dialogue technique as the camera circles around them (such as we briefly saw when they introduced Altman for his Honorary Oscar), but clearly improv around the situation. They spur Lindsay Lohan as Streep's sullen daughter to new heights of interacting with chemistry and singing in character. Streep's sweet and supportive, but not wholly disingenuous, sister and mother is amusingly the opposite of her titular boss in the simultaneously released "The Devil Wears Prada", in case we needed more proof of her range as an actress.
The fictional radio show is almost all musical. Unlike the public radio show's more typical "Ed Sullivan Show" mix of international, jazz, classical or regional music, this more Grand Ole Opry version has a heavy emphasis on red state values inspirational songs. We see usual guests the Hopeful Gospel Quartet with the addition of a Negro spiritual interpreter to add some visual diversity, along with Maya Rudolph with nothing particularly to do as a pregnant stage manager's assistant. We also see the weekly show's past and present regulars from usual back-up band (Andy Stein, Butch Thompson, Pat Donohue, Peter Ostroushko) and sound effects expert Tom Keith. Most of the songs are Keillor's twist on traditional or familiar tunes with modified humorous lyrics, including an acerbic "Frankie and Johnny" by Lohan in updated celebration of the murder ballad.
Even when corny, the humor was gentle (and the trailer gave away most of the best jokes) and the older audience constantly chuckled appreciatively, in a converted multiplex theater much like the Fitzgerald.
Except for an epilogue that doesn't quite jell, the casual action mostly takes place in a back stage stuffed with decades of performance memorabilia that reinforces the sense of place. This is a lovely tribute to the culture of Midwest America.
Unlike the show's brief stint on the Disney Channel (satirized effectively on "The Simpsons" as too cerebral humor for television) or the recent version of some of the same songs and skits from the film on PBS's "Great Performances", this is not just a film of the broadcast, which I've seen in person twice (once at its home base as shown here at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul and once on the road in NYC where I remember the participants running around more frantically just in time to sound casual on the air), but a tribute to the kind of show that inspired it.
Keillor's own script, not dissimilar in plot to a Muppets movie, has regular characters from his stories appear, with mixed effectiveness, as real people, literally or as types. Though there is only elliptical reference to Lake Woebegone, Kevin Kline is gumshoe "Guy Noir", Virginia Madsen is an angel of intersecting coincidences (with an ironic joke about NPR driveway moments), and Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are funnier and more musically talented ersatz cowboy duo "Dusty" and "Lefty", respectively, than we usually hear. Instead of Keillor's monologue all at once, we get a running joke of pieces of his drawn-out explanation of how he got started in radio.
Who raises the film to larger interest is Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin playing a sister singing duo. Not only are they magical masters of Altman's overlapping dialogue technique as the camera circles around them (such as we briefly saw when they introduced Altman for his Honorary Oscar), but clearly improv around the situation. They spur Lindsay Lohan as Streep's sullen daughter to new heights of interacting with chemistry and singing in character. Streep's sweet and supportive, but not wholly disingenuous, sister and mother is amusingly the opposite of her titular boss in the simultaneously released "The Devil Wears Prada", in case we needed more proof of her range as an actress.
The fictional radio show is almost all musical. Unlike the public radio show's more typical "Ed Sullivan Show" mix of international, jazz, classical or regional music, this more Grand Ole Opry version has a heavy emphasis on red state values inspirational songs. We see usual guests the Hopeful Gospel Quartet with the addition of a Negro spiritual interpreter to add some visual diversity, along with Maya Rudolph with nothing particularly to do as a pregnant stage manager's assistant. We also see the weekly show's past and present regulars from usual back-up band (Andy Stein, Butch Thompson, Pat Donohue, Peter Ostroushko) and sound effects expert Tom Keith. Most of the songs are Keillor's twist on traditional or familiar tunes with modified humorous lyrics, including an acerbic "Frankie and Johnny" by Lohan in updated celebration of the murder ballad.
Even when corny, the humor was gentle (and the trailer gave away most of the best jokes) and the older audience constantly chuckled appreciatively, in a converted multiplex theater much like the Fitzgerald.
Except for an epilogue that doesn't quite jell, the casual action mostly takes place in a back stage stuffed with decades of performance memorabilia that reinforces the sense of place. This is a lovely tribute to the culture of Midwest America.