Movie Review: A Prairie Home Companion
June 20th, 2006,I had high expectations for this movie. As a longtime fan of Garrison Keillor, particularly his radio monologues and his humorous books Happy to Be Here and Lake Wobegon Days, I was disappointed by the movie version of A Prairie Home Companion. Directed by Robert Altman and written by Keillor, the film has talent behind it, a pleasantly sentimental streak, and some nice moments, but it doesn’t quite fly.
First of all, there isn’t much of a story here, not even for an Altman film. The plot concerns a radio show of the same name and format as the real Prairie Home Companion, and its cast members perform onstage and talk backstage. The behind-the-scenes discussion focuses on news that this performance will be the show’s last. An angel, played by Virginia Madsen, walks around and appears to some of the cast members and employees. None of it seems to matter all that much, because only one or two characters in the movie seem to care about what happens – whether it’s the death of a person or the show.
The star-studded cast can’t lift this film, either. Kevin Kline portrays Guy Noir, the hardboiled detective, as more bumbling than the radio version. Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin play the Johnson sisters, a singing duo who gab in passable regional accents about their family history. They’re joined by the teenage daughter of Streep’s character (Lindsay Lohan), who works on her morose, suicide-obsessed poetry and chimes in occasionally. Tommy Lee Jones appears midway through the film as the Axeman, an evangelical Texas capitalist (a segment of the population treated mercilessly by Keillor) who has come to shut the show down.
Much of the movie’s humor falls short of the radio show. It’s as if this new medium throws off Keillor’s usually sharp comic judgment. Some exceptions are the jokes told by Dusty and Lefty, the show’s two cowboys – played by Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly.
Keillor never does his monologue, either, my favorite part of the radio show. That’s where we learn the most about his connection – and the show’s connection - to Minnesota and the larger region. The closest we get to the monologue in the movie is a wonderful song written by Keillor, “Goodbye to My Mama,” performed by the Johnson sisters. It deals with a recurring theme in his recent writing - the loss of older family members and the passing of time.
Without the connection to Lake Wobegon – and without acknowledgment of the real show’s loyal international following – the movie seems disembodied from the region that defines it, a pale ghost that doesn’t do justice to the power of the real thing. I found myself wishing that I could watch a simple documentary about the Prairie Home phenomenon.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is the uncredited star of the movie. For many years now, the radio show has made its home in a St. Paul theater that Keillor renamed the Fitzgerald Theater, in honor of Minnesota’s most famous writer. Fitzgerald’s image appears repeatedly throughout the film - in a picture at the entrance to the theater and as a bust that is seen so frequently it almost functions as one of the movie’s characters.
The sculpture of Fitzgerald hovers over the scenes in the theater’s VIP box, where the Axeman watches the show he’s about to kill. Fitzgerald’s presence serves as a counterpoint to the Texas capitalist and a reminder from Keillor that good art will live on somehow, even when it earns the hostility of the wealthy and powerful.