Starring: Marylouise Burke, Woody Harrelson, L.Q. Jones, Tommy Lee Jones, Garrison Keillor Directed By: Robert Altman Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Binding: DVD Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Full Screen, NTSC Label: New Line Home Video Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: October 10, 2006 Running Time: 106 minutes Theatrical Release Date: June 09, 2006
Product Description: The movie is a celebrity version of Garrison Keillor's radio show. It adds a slight story of the radio show ending as a new owner (Tommy Lee Jones) has bought the Fitzgerald theater that the show broadcasts from and is going to tear it down. Another fantasy element is thrown in as an angel (Virginia Madsen) stalks the theater to take one of the performers. Keillor plays the lead character coincidentally called GK. Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep play the singing Johnson Sisters with Lindsay Lohan as a suicide-obsessed daughter of Streep. Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are hilarious as the slightly off-color singing cowboy duo Dusty & Lefty. Kevin Kline is a security guard who tells the story. Maya Rudolph also appears as a pregnant stage coordinator. Contains some mild sexually-oriented jokes.DVD Features:Available Subtitles: English SpanishAvailable Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1) English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)li>Commentary by director Robert Altman and actor Kevin KlineDeleted scenes with optional commentary"Come Play With Us: A Feature Companion" featurette"Onstage at the Fitzgerald: A Music Companion" - extended musical performances and advertisement segmentsSoundtrack preview (jump to songs in the film)TrailerSystem Requirements:Run Time: 105 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG-13 UPC: 794043105418 Manufacturer No: N10541
Amazon.com: Robert Altman and Garrison Keillor combine reality and fantasy in this smooth, ebullient take on the long-running Prairie Home Companion radio show. Set during the show's fictitious last broadcast--the host station has been bought--the film has plenty of elements from the real PHC radiocasts, including a live audience and the sensational Shoe band. The onstage program is mostly music numbers, a beguiling mix of standards and old-style country. However, the show's usual comedy sketches are never presented, save for the commercial parodies--this may be a PHC show, but Lake Wobegone is never mentioned. Instead, the sketches are played out as backstage banter that feautres the Johnson Sisters (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), a harried stage hand (Maya Rudolph), a former listener turned angel (Virginia Madsen), and Keillor himself (a crusty alter-ego named simply G.K.). A few characters from the real PHC are given life: the singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty and gumshoe Guy Noir are embodied by Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, and Kevin Kline, respectively. Old flames are fanned, stories are spun, new talents are found (Lindsay Lohan has a chance to shine as Streep's daughter) and everyone wonders if G.K. will do something to ebb the tide of cancellation (personified by Tommy Lee Jones as the corporate Axeman). All of the actors do right as singers, and seem to be having the time of their life. Keillor's screenplay is perfect fodder for Altman's usual brand of storytelling, as characters babble on with the camera picking them up often in mid-thought. The film appeared a few months after Altman received an honorary Oscar, and the director is still at the top of his game, creating this smile-inducing, song-filled time, ending with an ethereal last musical number. --Doug Thomas
The Death of an Old Man is Not a Tragedy A Prairie Home Companion is a great tapestry of storytelling. On the evening of the last show before being bought out and consumed by a corporate rival, the cast members of the show attempt to come to terms with the end of their long-running radio installment. The movie seems to take place mostly in real time as the final show unfolds. Each member has his or her own personal story and the show has meant something unique in each of their lives. We only catch glimpses of these characters' lives, like you would when making conversation with new acquaintances at a dinner party. But we also catch brief glimpses of the pain, frustration or beauty in each of them. We don't get to know them well but we get to know them well enough to see their humanity. Even when a beloved cast member drops dead backstage after his final performance, we see the grief in these characters and subsequently the resilience in them to remember him lovingly--and even use a bit of humor to dull the pain. The little bits of drama weaved in between heartfelt down home songs, goofy advertising jingles and the even goofier songs played by Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly, respectively) are perfect counterpoints. It takes a wise and perhaps grizzled man to stare death in the eye and not flee from it--whether it be the death of a friend, death of a radio show or death of a comfortable way of life. Garrison Keillor is wonderful in this role and brings a bit of grace to the idea that you can't control change, you can only control how you react to it. How fitting that this was director Robert Altman's final show as well.
Idea: OK - Execution: Terrible - Intent: Dubious I won't repeat what a lot of the one-stars here are saying, much of which I agree with. It wasn't the plotlessness and the stereotyping that truly bothered me the most, it was the supposition behind this project that oozes out in every line and incident. First of all, let me say that the final sequence and credits is the best part of the film, the performance of "In the Sweet By and By," because this is what Prairie Home Companion (PHC) has been (and still is) about, passing some of the great traditions of the American past on to present generations. The songs Garrison Keillor uses in his shows ("Sweet By and By", "John Henry," etc.) are some of the greatest cultural products of our nation, and his show makes these songs really human, often by building a story around them.
But that aspect doesn't come across in the film. More importantly, the most important part of PHC, the audience, is COMPLETELY missing in this film! Only once, at the very beginning when they are filing in to the theatre, do we see an audience - a sort of stereotypical "geeky" Minnesota audience, I might add. We never really hear them at all throughout the show and pretty much forget that there even is anybody out there! The audience, both in the theatres and at home/car/wherever, are what make PHC what it is. When Garrison Keillor tells a story you can hear the audience respond in recognition of some of the characters he describes or laugh at an incident that reminds them of something that happened in their own family. I can't believe that GK supposedly wrote this screenplay and left out the audience. Here is my take on it - for better or worse - the portrayal of a modern audience as a real character in PHC would give the impression that the show is alive and current and meaningful to a present-day audience (which it is and continues to be) - with old songs brought up to date with current events and situations, both political and social. But the director and Hollywood production team don't want to do that. Hollywood is in the business of tearing down culture, not shoring it up. So PHC is an old out-of-date artifact - it's supposed to have lost its meaning in today's sound-byte cynical world. But of course anyone who listens to or has attended a PHC show knows this is not at all the case. This movie therefore is NOT about PHC. It's about Hollywood poking fun (yet again) at another institution of American Culture. Hollywood doesn't really like success stories that aren't about Hollywood, and the 30+ year success of an NPR radio show with an audience that is comfortable mixing old-fashion values with a modern sensibility is just too outrageous for them, so Hollywood producers have to show all these characters as has-beens, dotty, self-absorbed, and - perhaps the most egregious - unprofessional, which is clearly not the case in reality.
And once again, I should add, Hollywood is taking pot-shots at generational differences. The young people - of which there is only one in this movie! - are "cool," while the old people are sentimental idiots. That last scene in the diner is one of the most objectionable in the entire film. The daughter, who has just been humiliated in the previous scene by being forced to sing a song onstage - NOTE: how "unprofessional" is this? - and now she gets her revenge. She doesn't even have time to hang up from her cell phone call to have a conversation with her mom. Her mom is a brainless nincompoop who doesn't know anything about money, while the daughter is oh-so sophisticated. She breezes in, says some insulting things to her mom - which her mom has earned, right? - and then breezes back out on her phone. Once again, the older people who have the knowledge and experience, even what should be the professionalism, are here portrayed as the clueless ones. I wish that Meryl Streep would have refused to play the scene. But then the whole movie was set up that way right from the beginning, with the Streep and Tomlin characters. These two actresses were fabulous in what seemed like an long ad-lib at the beginning, but unfortunately it just set the characters up to be pitied and, eventually, written-off, even by their own offspring. Really sad. And totally against the theme of PHC.
Anyway, the radio show still runs, I know many people who listen every week and love it (and learn from it) - and it is still a wonderful mix of old and new, the traditional and the crazy present. There are lots of young people and often phenomenal guests on the show, and it reminds us of what real VARIETY shows were about, and should still be about: reaching out to a wide audience and makes people laugh, not at someone else, but at themselves - it reminds them that humanity only means something when it's shared.
Meryl's accent is worth it I have been a fan of Prairie Home Companion (radio) for a while and think this movie is a great companion piece. No, it is not a film version of the radio broadcast. It wasn't set up to be. It starts off as a Guy Noir mystery - one of the components of the radio program which some of the reviewers here seem to be missing. The movie is a behind-the-scenes look into the program, and on the evening of it's final performance. Thankfully it is just a movie plot. The radio program continues to delight listeners with it's live broadcast every week from Minnesota.
Meryl Streep's Minnesota accent and speech dialect are absolutely amazing! I personally don't know folks from that region, but if you ever watched FARGO, and listened to many of the characters voicings (most notably Margie, the investigating police officer played by the very wonderful Frances McDormand) and compared Meryl Streep's interpretation, you'd just have to admire her commitment and ability. She sings quite nicely, too.
The slower pacing the film may have that some folks may find boring is more an indication of their own lack of patience or tolerance. Everything commited to film doesn't have to be geared to short attention span types.
Time Better Spent Alone I've never much cared for Altman, and this film displays his fashionably nihilistic, aimlessly sappy meanderings at their worst. A grave injustice to Garrison Keillor's quirky weekly broadcast and a typically Altman-esque waste of a great cast. Surprisingly, it's Lindsay Lohan who acquits herself most admirably with understated comic performances that cannot be missed: so, both for her scene delivering a mangled rendition of "Frankie and Johnny" and for her portrayal of an adolescent's interactions with her harried show-biz mom (played well by an otherwise criminally underutilized Meryl Streep), this movie might possibly perhaps be a little worth watching ... almost - but for those scenes alone and for nothing else! Blech. Double-blech. Avoid!
Decent, but not enough like the radio show I really wanted to see this movie because in one of my college classes, part of our assignment was to listen to "A Prairie Home Companion" the original radio show. They radio shows always amused me and I loved a lot of the fake commercials and really liked the bits with the detective. So when I heard the movie was coming out, I figured it would be good and I wanted to see it to relive a little of my college life.
I must say that compared to the original radio shows, the movie kind of lacked in humor. Some of the greatest Prairie Home Companion bits were left out. And they made the show seem like it was a lot of singing, when the original radio show wasn't. And I will admit that I hated Lindsey Lohan's character. It really pulled away from what I felt the original Companion was like, and he song about death at the end was upsetting.
A lot of the parts of the movie seemed to drag on and made it hard to really get into it. I found myself getting up to do random other activities around the room because it a bit too long and not fast paced enough to really keep someones' attention. I find it a little silly that as a radio show, it was more enthralling then it was as a live action movie.
All in all, I was slightly disappointed in the movie. The only comic relief in the whole thing the cowboy duos' (the one with Woody Harrelson) songs. I'm just a little disappointed that they took this great old fashioned radio show, cut out their best bits (although you do get a bit of the detective bit feeling in Kevin Kline's character), and made into a complete musical.
I guess if you hadn't heard the original shows, its not that bad of a movie, but prefer the radio shows to the movie by far.
(And to be honest, I still find the "angel's" role in the movie to be completely pointless since she really doesn't do anything to help anyone on the radio show except the old lady having the affair with old perverted guy that dies).
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