The fact that "A Prairie Home Companion" was Robert Altman's final film makes it all the more eye-opening that the movie portrays a final broadcast. In fact, the presence of the Dangerous Woman (Virginia Madsen) almost seems to foretell Altman's approaching end.
Anyway, the movie portrays the final broadcast of Garrison Keillor's (playing himself) famous radio show - which is done like a 1940s broadcast - as a Texas company is taking it over. In the process of everything, people's secrets get revealed (namely in the duct tape scene), and one gets a sense of independently owned media sources getting bought out. But regardless of what happens, the various performers all know that they have to hang on to their lives.
Among the performers are the calm Johnson Sisters (Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep), the dirty-minded Lefty and Dusty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly), and others. The real sense of the 1940s comes in the form of detective Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), keeping an eye on everything; he looks as anachronistic as the show itself, but he never lets it get him down.
The movie has the definite feel of a Robert Altman movie, with the overlapping dialogue (I remember that when Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep gave Altman his honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards in February, they talked like that). Not his best movie by any stretch, but still worth seeing. Also starring Tommy Lee Jones, Lindsay Lohan, and Maya Rudolph.
It runs in your blood. Yeah...
Anyway, the movie portrays the final broadcast of Garrison Keillor's (playing himself) famous radio show - which is done like a 1940s broadcast - as a Texas company is taking it over. In the process of everything, people's secrets get revealed (namely in the duct tape scene), and one gets a sense of independently owned media sources getting bought out. But regardless of what happens, the various performers all know that they have to hang on to their lives.
Among the performers are the calm Johnson Sisters (Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep), the dirty-minded Lefty and Dusty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly), and others. The real sense of the 1940s comes in the form of detective Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), keeping an eye on everything; he looks as anachronistic as the show itself, but he never lets it get him down.
The movie has the definite feel of a Robert Altman movie, with the overlapping dialogue (I remember that when Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep gave Altman his honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards in February, they talked like that). Not his best movie by any stretch, but still worth seeing. Also starring Tommy Lee Jones, Lindsay Lohan, and Maya Rudolph.
It runs in your blood. Yeah...