Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 105 minutes
Release Date: June 9th, 2006 (USA)
Studio: Picturehouse
Director(s): Robert Altman
Writer(s): Garrison Keillor / Garrison Keillor & Ken LaZebnik (story) / Garrison Keillor (radio program “A Prairie Home Companion”)

If you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass.

Being a huge fan of Short Cuts and Gosford Park, I was ecstatic to see Robert Altman went back to his layered dialogue and fly-on-the-wall storytelling style with A Prairie Home Companion, (I haven’t seen The Company, but it just didn’t strike me as that Altman). The film is a nice, poignant tale about the final show from Garrison Keillor’s ragtag band of misfits. What a crew they are too.

Keillor shines playing himself with amazing comic timing and facial expressions that I wasn’t quite expecting considering he’s done radio for so long, but his natural charisma and being the script’s composer allows for a very rich and real performance. Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are a singing act with a great rapport, bouncing joke after joke off each other. Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin are hilarious as musical sisters who have been taking hallucinogens for years or are just really high on life (I couldn’t decide which). Lindsay Lohan does well with a small role that I’m not sure is the serious adult breakthrough people hail it as—she plays a young girl obsessed with death, yet cries “why?” to anyone who will listen when death is seen firsthand. And the chameleon that is Kevin Kline delivers Guy Noir, our occasional narrator/private detective/security man whose clumsiness and convoluted, overdramatic speech lend a nice touch.

Altman does what Altman does best by giving us continuous streams of conversations burned to celluloid. As Keillor himself says in the movie, silence and radio just don’t go together and that credo exists here too. He directs this troupe of characters beautifully as only he can (with exception to Paul Thomas Anderson who served as “back-up director” for insurance purposes due to Altman’s age, hopefully securing some of these actors to support Daniel Day Lewis in his new film There Will Be Blood). The actors keep the laughs coming and, even when a joke seems to be done—or overdone—a character adds one final quip to send the audience reeling in their seats again.

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Garrison Keillor, Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep and Lindsay Lohan in A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon.