A Prairie Home Companion

While watching A Prairie Home Companion, I was taken back to the days of drinking lemonade on the porch, eating biscuits and gravy, and watching Hee-Haw with my grandparents. I'm not old enough to go back to the times when radio was the dominant entertainment force, but I get what it's about--the immediacy with the audience, the trust and loyalty that a show can build, as well as the honesty.

I've been a listener of the actual Prairie Home Companion show for several years now. I dig Garrison Keillor's droll, Midwestern, liberal humor. The music isn't as much as my thing, as it tends toward the country, bluegrass and gospel, but it surely doesn't hurt to be exposed to that sort of music once a week. So I had an idea what I was getting in for when I went to see this film, and while watching it I just sat back and basked in its glow.

The film is an old-fashioned backstage story, set during the running time of a live radio show called A Prairie Home Companion. Unlike the real thing, which airs on public radio and has corporate sponsors and is hosted by a best-selling author, this version is a rinky-dink affair on a local Minnesota station. The station has been sold to a Texas conglomerate and will close down, and we are watching the last show. Keillor plays a version of himself as the host, with regular performers such as the singing Johnson Girls (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin) and singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly). There's also a security man, played in Inspector Clouseau fashion by Kevin Kline, and Streep's daughter, Lindsay Lohan, who is busy writing poems about suicide. Into all this mix comes a woman dressed in white, Virginia Madsen, who may be the angel of death.

All of this was like butter to me. Directed by Robert Altman in his usual style of long takes and overlapping dialogue, it took me back to my theatrical days, seeing the camaraderie of show people. The performances are all low-key yet affecting. The story arc with Lohan's character doesn't have a good pay-off, but everything else wraps up nicely.

As a bonus, Dusty and Left perform a bad jokes routine that had the audience in stithces, and is worth the price of admission.