A Prairie Home Companion DVD Review

"A Prairie Home Companion" reviews

DVD

A Prairie Home Companion

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-04-27 15:00:28

Provider

DVD Review

The final film that Robert Altman put his name to before he died last November, aged 81, serves as a poignant reminder of why he was regarded as one of the true greats.

Based on a script by Garrison Keillor, and starring some of the characters from Keillor's radio show of the same name, A Prairie Home Companion details the messy lives of a cast of radio performers whose show is about to be brought to an end by The Axeman (Tommy Lee Jones), a rich, heartless Texan who has acquired the station. Aggrieved, the performers demand a minute's silence from the show's host GK (Garrison Keillor), who refuses on the grounds that a minute's silence is dead air.

As in all the best Altman films, God is in the detail - Ed Lachman's camera moving in and out of the performers' dressing room, allowing him to eavesdrop on a snatch of conversation. In the process we learn about such characters as the singing Johnson sisters Yolanda (Meryl Streep) and Rhonda (Lily Tomlin), and Yolanda's daughter, Lola (Lindsay Lohan); cowboy buddy pairing Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C Reilly); and the mysterious Dangerous Woman, whose 'hair was the colour God had in mind when he said, "Let there be hair".'

The result is a film that, bolstered by a handful of special features, chief among them a commentary by Kevin Kline and Robert Altman, is a hymn to the little pleasures that life affords.