A Prairie Home Companion

By Kirk Honeycutt


Bottom line: Who says you can't do a terrific radio show in a movie?
Screened at the Berlin International Film Festival

BERLIN -- Not since Woody Allen's "Radio Days" has anyone created such a cinematic Valentine to the wonderfully imaginative medium of radio as "A Prairie Home Companion." Garrison Keillor, impresario, creator and host of one of radio's longest running programs -- 31 years and counting -- and director Robert Altman are a match made in heaven. To these two Midwesterners, the region's dry, whimsical humor, unfailing politeness and straight-shooting sensibility are as natural as their own skins. There is no artifice or slickness here, just a native, keen intelligence that slyly hides behind homespun wit and verbal slapstick.

Keillor's radio show is, of course, beloved by many and Altman's movie, as Altman movies so often do, comes heavily populated with marquee actors. So the domestic theatrical audience for "Prairie" should be wide and varied. Overseas is a tough call: So much of the movie relies on deep-grained American humor along with puns and word play in English that get lost in subtitles. Nevertheless, an audience here at the Berlinale responded favorably to the music-flavored film even if some of verbal gags fell flat.

Filmed at St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater in Keillor's home state of Minnesota, "Prairie" essentially puts a radio show much like "A Prairie Home Companion" on film. Backstage, onstage and around the aging theater, the movie (written by Keillor from a story by him and Ken LaZebnik) imagines a fateful final broadcast of a show that has been given the axe by a soulless Texas corporation. (Keillor knows how to pick his villain's state, doesn't he?)

The central musical acts belong to Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), the remaining members of what once was a four-sister country music act, and Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly), singing cowboys and rivals in one-upsmanship.

Yolanda's daughter Lola (Lindsay Lohan) distracts herself from her mom's oft-told tales of the theatrical life by penning poems about suicide. Guy Noir, a recurring character on Keillorr's show, is brought aboard here as the program's "security director." As the throwback detective, Kevin Kline mixes Chandler-esque dialogue with more than a touch of Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau.

The broadcast's harried stage manager (Tim Russell, a regular on Keillor's show) and his assistant ("Saturday Night Live's" Maya Rudolph) are given new ways to break into sweat by the unpredictable cast. And through all the delightful confusion and musical numbers drift two iconic figures: GK (Keillor himself), a benign, unruffled presence who smoothly adapts to all exigencies, and a Dangerous Woman (Virginia Madsen), an angel in a white trench coat, taking the earthly and shapely form of a woman who died listening to the show's broadcast. It was a penguin joke that done her in.

Minor attempts to introduce plot material -- such as an unlikely past affair between Yolanda and GK, the death of a performer and the arrival of the corporate axeman (Tommy Lee Jones) -- never lead anywhere. Even the filmmakers seem to forget them moments after their introduction.

No, the movie steadfastly sticks to its radio roots. The comic bits from Streep & Tomlin and Harrelson & Reilly are gems of off-the-cuff humor. Keillor's droll lyrics and jingles for fictional sponsors poke good-natured fun. The toe-tapping musical performances are refreshingly captured by Edward Lachman's mobile camera, all smoothly edited by Jacob Craycroft.

As a character remarks, this radio show is the kind of program that died 50 years ago only someone forgot to tell the performers. Thank God for that.

A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION
Picturehouse
GreeneStreet Films and River Road Entertainment present a Sandcastle 5 and Prairie Home production
Credits: Director: Robert Altman; Writer: Garrison Keillor; Story by: Garrison Keilor, Ken LaZebnik; Producers: Robert Altman; Wren Arthur, Joshua Astrachan, Tony Judge, David Levy; Executive producers: William Pohlad, John Penotti, Fisher Stevens, George Sheanshang; Director of photography: Edward Lachman; Production designer: Dina Goldman; Music: Richard Dworsky; Costumes: Catherine Marie Thomas; Editor: Jacob Craycroft.
Cast: Yolanda Johnson: Meryl Streep; Rhonda Johnson: Lily Tomlin; GK: Garrison Keillor; Dusty: Woody Harrelson; Lefty: John C. Reilly; Lola: Lindsay Lohan; Guy Noir: Kevin Kline; Molly: Maya Rudolph; Axeman: Tommy Lee Jones; Dangerous woman: Virginia Madsen.

No MPAA rating, running time 105 minutes.
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