Product Details

• Format: PAL

Customer Reviews

charming, off-beat, very funny - Altman's farewell
This was Robert Altman's last film, and has a certain poignancy as a result, particularly as a major theme is ageing and not always welcome change. But it is at least as much Garrison Keillor's film - it is based on his work in radio stations, he wrote the screenplay and he plays himself in it. 'The Prairie Home Companion', a kind of off-beat country-and-western Minnesota radio programme recorded live in a tatty old music hall, is on its last legs - this is the last show. We see a good deal of the show, performed with great verve by such as Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Keillor and Meryl Streep, who is a revelation in her role as one of the singing Johnson sisters - she is absolutely marvellous. We also go backstage (or, to be more accurate, below stage) to the dressing rooms. A Chandleresque private eye (but a very clumsy one, well played by Kevin Kline) tells the story, and the device of a kind of guardian angel (called Asphodel - Virginia Madsen) frames the whole thing. Some of the songs are sentimental, but performed with such verve and conviction that they really work anyway, but the film overall is not ; it ends bitter-sweetly, and the inevitability of change and closure, welcome or not, is very real. I saw it in a cinema, and it is often very funny - I haven't heard so many people laugh out loud for a long time. Keillor's droll radio adverts and Harrelson and Reilly (Dusty and Lefty, the trail-hardened cowboys) singing a sequence of blue jokes, some awful, some clever, are highlights. It's a film you can feel very warmly towards, and the most sheerly enjoyable film I have seen for a while.

What a joy
I too saw this film at the cinema and can't wait to get a copy on DVD. The film is uplifting and happy and left me (and I think the rest of the audience) with a real feelgood factor.

Immensely funny and original, but with a bitter-sweet feel that removes all sentimentality, it is an absolute must for Garrison Keillor fans. He is an amazing act on his own, and with the superlative cast around him, the film could not fail.

Give it a try
Saw it this evening and highly recommend it. No previous knowledge of the director and definitely not a fan of Meryl Streep but a great show all round. Interesting on many levels and at the end of it all it brought on some overdue laughing. Not my usual choice of film but a welcome change indeed.