A Prairie Home Companion

I know a lot of people here listen to the radio show from previous NPR threads, I was wondering who went to check out the movie or is planning to.

I just got back from seeing it and I thought it was fabulous. The gist of the story is that the company that owns the radio station from where APHC originates was sold to a company in Texas and tonight is the last broadcast ever. So you see this weaving of what is going on backstage and what is being broadcast on stage.

Kevin Kline, as it is in pretty much any movie he's in, shined the brightest as Guy Noir, a private eye (from skits we've all heard before) who moonlights as the security guard for the show. And Garrison Keillor was fantastic, he deserves all the praise he's been getting. Wrote a great script and was quite a good actor too (I mean, he was playing himself in a role he's done for years, but still...).

If you listen to APHC, you'll notice that the show in the movie is pretty much all music and no skits, but the skit is basically the entire movie, so I guess that kind of makes sense, but it does seem a bit song-heavy at times. Nothing about Lake Wobegon, I missed hearing that the children were all above average. Just a brief mention of Catchup, but a good bit on duck tape.

Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly have the funniest moment, singing a song of bad jokes that had every single person in the theater laughing (I was the youngest person in the theater and probably the only one who didn't get a senior discount).

Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin began to annoy the fuck out of me after a while, but I think that's true in any movie they are in. Lindsay Lohan did a great job and looked better than she ever has in any movie.

All around good movie, from script to plot to direction (I've always loved how Altman lets the dialogue run together) to camera work (they do great with the use of mirrors backstage)...I highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in APHC.

Jam it back in, in the dark.