"A Prairie Home Companion" Movie Review
"A Prairie Home Companion" (October 14,2006).
For years my family occasionally tuned in to public radio on Saturday nights to catch snippets of Garison Keiler's radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." It's a variety show with musical guests, usually folk or blues; sketch comedy with imaginary characters like Guy Noir, Private Eye and Dusty and Lefty, the old trailhands; advertisements for fake products like Powder Milk Biscuits, the American Duck Tape Council, and Ahoowa Hot Sauce; some jokes; and a bit of story telling about a tiny fictional town in Minnesota called Lake Woebegone.
Growing up, I enjoyed the show and loved listening to the News from Lake Woebegone, told in Garrison Keiler's quiet baritone voice, and a love for the show's music which has enhanced the pleasure of watching movies like "O Brother Where Art Thou," where the folk/gospel tradition was a key story-telling device, making it to date one of my favorite movies.
For these reasons I thought I would really enjoy the movie "A Prairie Home Companion," directed by Robert Altman. The movie gives a fictional look behind the scenes of the show, where the show's reality is intricately and imaginitively interwoven with the fictional sketches its actors perform, so that Guy Noir and Dusty and Lefty become real contributors to the radio show, not just characters in a sketch. Paired with the movie's dynamite cast, which included Woody Harrelson (Dusty), Tommy Lee Jones (Axeman), Kevin Kline (Guy Noir), Meryl Streep (Yolanda Johnson), and Lindsay Lohan (Lola Johnson), not to mention Garrison Keilor as himself, this movie looked like it would soar into the heart of any fan of the show.
The plot, according to the movie's official web page, is the story of a fictitious radio variety show that has survived into the television era. Set on a rainy night in St. Paul, the movie features near the beginning the radio show's live audience filing into the Fitzgerald Theater, unaware that, since the show's station WLT had been bought by a conglommerate from Texas, this was to be the show's last broadcast.
It was an inventive plot with a strong beginning as Guy Noir sets the scene and brings the viewer backstage to see what is occurring while the radio show begins its broadcast. Yet, somewhere along the way the movie stalled out and toward the end, it crashed and burned, leaving me quite disappointed.
For me, the movie's biggest flaw was the interactions between what was occurring offstage and what was occurring in the broadcast of the radio show. There were a few times when the two worlds intermingled. One such instance occurred when the stage manager begs Dusty and Lefty to go out with class and not play a lewd song. Instead the two singing cowboys go out on stage and perform a song that includes a number of jokes, just clean enough to be broadcast over the radio. Another occurs when Yolanda Johnson hints at a love affair between herself and Keilor that ended badly. For the most part, though, the two worlds remain unattached with little to no interaction.
Such interactions would have saved the broadcast show portion of the movie from being little more than a series of mediocre, and at times boring, singing performances (even by Meryl Streep and Lindsay Lohan) and the show's fake advertisements, which for the most part turned out to be more singing performances. But what was missing most from the movie was a segment of the News from Lake Woebegone. Every time Garrison Keillor walked onto the broadcast show's stage I was expecting his next words to be, "It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, my home town" with which he starts every one of his stories. The absence of the story left a large hole in the radio broadcast portion of the movie and in the entire movie itself. The inclusion of the News from Lake Woebegone would have offered an excellent opportunity for Keilor's character to address what was occurring behind the scenes in a way that was meaningful for the movie's audience and the cast of the radio show while presenting a bit of dramatic irony by alluding to things in the monologue about which the radio show's live audience has no knowledge.
So if you're a fan of "A Prairie Home Companion," it's worth a rental to hear Dusty and Lefty's jokes and to see Guy Noir fumbling around back stage, but on the whole prepare to be disappointed.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
For years my family occasionally tuned in to public radio on Saturday nights to catch snippets of Garison Keiler's radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." It's a variety show with musical guests, usually folk or blues; sketch comedy with imaginary characters like Guy Noir, Private Eye and Dusty and Lefty, the old trailhands; advertisements for fake products like Powder Milk Biscuits, the American Duck Tape Council, and Ahoowa Hot Sauce; some jokes; and a bit of story telling about a tiny fictional town in Minnesota called Lake Woebegone.
Growing up, I enjoyed the show and loved listening to the News from Lake Woebegone, told in Garrison Keiler's quiet baritone voice, and a love for the show's music which has enhanced the pleasure of watching movies like "O Brother Where Art Thou," where the folk/gospel tradition was a key story-telling device, making it to date one of my favorite movies.
For these reasons I thought I would really enjoy the movie "A Prairie Home Companion," directed by Robert Altman. The movie gives a fictional look behind the scenes of the show, where the show's reality is intricately and imaginitively interwoven with the fictional sketches its actors perform, so that Guy Noir and Dusty and Lefty become real contributors to the radio show, not just characters in a sketch. Paired with the movie's dynamite cast, which included Woody Harrelson (Dusty), Tommy Lee Jones (Axeman), Kevin Kline (Guy Noir), Meryl Streep (Yolanda Johnson), and Lindsay Lohan (Lola Johnson), not to mention Garrison Keilor as himself, this movie looked like it would soar into the heart of any fan of the show.
The plot, according to the movie's official web page, is the story of a fictitious radio variety show that has survived into the television era. Set on a rainy night in St. Paul, the movie features near the beginning the radio show's live audience filing into the Fitzgerald Theater, unaware that, since the show's station WLT had been bought by a conglommerate from Texas, this was to be the show's last broadcast.
It was an inventive plot with a strong beginning as Guy Noir sets the scene and brings the viewer backstage to see what is occurring while the radio show begins its broadcast. Yet, somewhere along the way the movie stalled out and toward the end, it crashed and burned, leaving me quite disappointed.
For me, the movie's biggest flaw was the interactions between what was occurring offstage and what was occurring in the broadcast of the radio show. There were a few times when the two worlds intermingled. One such instance occurred when the stage manager begs Dusty and Lefty to go out with class and not play a lewd song. Instead the two singing cowboys go out on stage and perform a song that includes a number of jokes, just clean enough to be broadcast over the radio. Another occurs when Yolanda Johnson hints at a love affair between herself and Keilor that ended badly. For the most part, though, the two worlds remain unattached with little to no interaction.
Such interactions would have saved the broadcast show portion of the movie from being little more than a series of mediocre, and at times boring, singing performances (even by Meryl Streep and Lindsay Lohan) and the show's fake advertisements, which for the most part turned out to be more singing performances. But what was missing most from the movie was a segment of the News from Lake Woebegone. Every time Garrison Keillor walked onto the broadcast show's stage I was expecting his next words to be, "It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, my home town" with which he starts every one of his stories. The absence of the story left a large hole in the radio broadcast portion of the movie and in the entire movie itself. The inclusion of the News from Lake Woebegone would have offered an excellent opportunity for Keilor's character to address what was occurring behind the scenes in a way that was meaningful for the movie's audience and the cast of the radio show while presenting a bit of dramatic irony by alluding to things in the monologue about which the radio show's live audience has no knowledge.
So if you're a fan of "A Prairie Home Companion," it's worth a rental to hear Dusty and Lefty's jokes and to see Guy Noir fumbling around back stage, but on the whole prepare to be disappointed.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
posted by Brad Smith at 11:21 AM
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