A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

A Prairie Home Companion: 2006, dir. Robert Altman. Seen on June 24, 2006 (Dobie Egyptian Room).
Neither the Beau nor I were eager to see A Prairie Home Companion, but it was our only choice for a non-stupid comedy over the weekend. We aren’t huge Altman devotees (although I’m quite fond of MASH), and we’ve never been fans of the radio show, but wanted a light, smart movie to watch in a theater. A Prairie Home Companion was just right for meeting those expectations.
A Prairie Home Companion is an offshoot of Garrison Keillor’s radio show. In the movie, Keillor plays himself, G.K., the host of a live radio show that is giving what may be its last performance before new owners of the venerable old theater knock it down for a parking lot. Some of the musical acts on the show include Lefty and Dusty (John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson), the Johnson Sisters (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), and Chuck Akers (L.Q. Jones). Meanwhile, detective wanna-be Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) has spotted an unusual backstage guest … the mysterious Dangerous Woman (Virginia Madsen). Can she somehow help save the theater and the radio show? Will the heartless new owner (Tommy Lee Jones) really go through with it? And what’s been going on between G.K. and Streep’s character, anyway?

The film is characteristically Altman in its large number of characters with entwining stories. However, Altman seems to show more empathy and even charity toward his characters than I’ve noticed in past films such as MASH and Short Cuts. Normally the characters in his films seem to be at a distance, and we see more of their flaws and their ugly sides. This time, we tend to feel more warmly about the characters and their fate.
I could have done without the Dangerous Woman subplot entirely, including the business with Tommy Lee Jones. It jarred with the rest of the film, and I didn’t quite see the point. The only advantage was that it gave more screen time to Guy Noir, and Kline was delightful to watch. He reminded me that I really ought to watch The Long Goodbye (I rented it from Netflix last year and the DVD was cracked).
It’s a pleasure to see many of these actors with such first-rate comic timing in an enjoyable comedy. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Kevin Kline being funny, and Streep didn’t get quite the right role (or film) in Prime. Tomlin didn’t quite get the screen time or lines that I would have expected; she is very much in Streep’s shadow, and her character is relatively weak. I hadn’t seen Harrelson in anything for years until A Scanner Darkly, and here he was making me laugh just as hard. I also took a special pleasure in seeing L.Q. Jones onscreen, however briefly; he was a regular in Peckinpah films and directed A Boy and His Dog. Lindsay Lohan is a non-entity in this cast of seasoned actors and radio professionals. She isn’t bad, but her big climactic moment near the end of the movie didn’t pay off significantly. The Beau pointed out that Lohan’s big scene was reminiscent of the ending of High Fidelity but lacking the high-wattage performance of Jack Black. Keillor, on the other hand, manages to hold his own quite nicely up against the rest of the cast.
A Prairie Home Companion had a number of entertaining moments: Harrelson and Reilly singing a song chock-full of dirty jokes, just to give the stage manager a conniption; Molly the stagehand going crazy because G.K. never seems to finish relating some endless anecdote when he’s due onstage; Tomlin’s character telling a story for broadcast that presents a continual challenge to the special-effects guy (apparently this is a regular feature on the real-life radio show). The music is quite good at times — I’d forgotten that Streep can sing (I believe I first heard her in Postcards from the Edge). I wouldn’t buy the soundtrack, but the music was a pleasant part of the movie.
A Prairie Home Companion was that rare thing: a movie that I liked and that my parents would enjoy too. It’s warm without being cloyingly sentimental, contains a lot of goofy humor, and is charming overall. It won’t rank among Altman’s top movies, but you can’t beat it for a good afternoon’s entertainment, especially in the midst of the usual summertime movie-theater fare. If you miss this movie in theaters, I think it would work very well as a rental — you don’t need a big screen to enjoy this film about a small radio show.