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Directed by: Robert Altman Starring: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Garrison Keillor, Virginia Madsen, Lily Tomlin Caught this the other night, and was very impressed. I was going in expecting a solid movie based on Altman's reputation as well as the impressive cast. The movie delivered on every level. The performances in "A Prairie Home Companion" are excellent. I'd say it should earn a couple Supporting Actor Oscars, but it might be too much of a comedy to show up on the Academy's radar. The worst of the actors was probably Lindsay Lohan (not surprising, considering she was in with heavyweights like Kline and Streep), but even she was pretty good. I had never really listened to the radio show before, so I wasn't sure what style of humor it would be. I was pleasantly surprised: the film manages to fill you with a kind of nostalgia. Even though you've just met these characters, their stories and songs seem familiar. I was laughing in the theater and with my friends afterward, and I was sad that the movie had to end. 5/5.5 RATING: 5 PROS: Writing, acting, directing, soundtrack CONS: Lohan sort of bugged me ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420087/
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Jun 12, 2006 00:09
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 13:47 |
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If you are a fan of the radio show (like I am) then this is a must. It is good but they sut out a few things and added a substory that I felt didn't need to be added. I actually saw APHC performed live a few years ago and it was one of the best live shows I have ever seen. But the movie isn't quite as good as the show. 4/5
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Jun 12, 2006 00:32
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This movie put me in a place that I wanted to stay in. Just the atmosphere of it all was amazing. My favorite parts were the Streep/Tomlin dialog parts where they are just both going on. Had a smile on my face the whole movie. 4.5/5
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Jun 12, 2006 06:32
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If you do not enjoy word play and music your grandparents would listen to, simply do not go do this movie. If however you enjoy a witty, intellegent film with a constant soundtrack of "old timey" music then this is the one you've been waiting for. A Prairie Home Companion, like "Oh Brother Where Art Thou," makes you feel as if you are transported to a diffrent time, where things happen slower and wakes you up to a field of green grass and dew glinting off the early morning sunrise. Yet somehow, it doesn't seem to drag. So, if you are of the age that you can enjoy listening into a visit between your grandfather and his brothers reminisce about that girl who used to go to school with them and lived down the block in that old white house with the big brown dog, what was her name... Nancy, that's it Nancy, sweet as pie, always would help her mother garden on Saturdays, I wonder what happened to her... This is your movie. 5/5.5
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Jun 12, 2006 12:52
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I came into this film with more than a little trepidation: at no point could I have called myself a Meryl Streep fan to any degree, and Lindsay Lohan's existence here scared me quite a bit. However, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline and Robert Altman promised too much hope to pass up. As always Altman was up to the task as far as giving the right look and feel for the film. The green room shots were very close and intimate, while the stage shots were appropriate movie-of-concert style. In this regard he in no way disappointed. Meryl Streep, even for a detractor of hers, pulled off her part very well both in terms of acting and singing (both of which surprised me). Kevin Kline, while perhaps in the background more than I would have liked, also did a wonderful job portraying the off-kilter Guy Noir. Garrison Keillor too was as good as he ever is on the show, and just seeing the sort of person his voice comes out of is interesting on its own. Unfortunately, the formerly outspoken and incisively funny Lily Tomlin spent much of the film in the background or playing second banana to Meryl Streep and Lindsay Lohan, and frankly is not really enough of a singer to carry her part of the band. The folk songs themselves are ultimately mediocre at best, providing equivalent fare as on weekend episodes without the opportunity to turn down the radio until tales of Guy Noir or the Artist come on once more. Lindsay Lohan, it goes without saying, comes in to represent the cute, blonde, perky, pretty, optimistic, life-affirming well-adjusted and accepted cheerleader type business-oriented goth girl emo depressive suicide-obsessed writing-poetry-about-violent-death-in-a-corner, dowdy southern belle yankee type. Which is to say that she tries to draw in any young girl they could imagine going to see the film, without representing any of them in an appropriate light. Her singing comes off as childish without being endearing, much like her character. The commercials are cute, as always, but ultimately the more literarily redeeming qualities of the movie are simply overshadowed by the aforementioned several mediocre folk songs and a certain subplot, worth at most about 3 minutes of interest and one admittedly nice joke, which lasts the entire movie and holds similar interest and worth to the movie as waiting two hours for a bus generally adds to my life. For me, "A Prairie Home Companion" juggled approximately a half hour of interesting story, some legitimately funny jokes and a bit of nice singing with an hour and a half of mediocre singing, empty musical theater drama and dull, plodding storylines with no discernibly worthwhile point for the time spent on them. I imagine that for a more interested listener to the show the split might be 50/50 on entertainment and boredom, but ultimately anyone other than a diehard fan will have to stifle more than a few bored yawns and disguised glances at their watch. As for Altman's work, I can't say he precisely disappoints since he did much of his job expertly, but the movie really could have benefitted with the sort of maudlin edge of "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" in its reading of midwestern life. 3/5 Freduardo fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Jun 20, 2006 |
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Jun 20, 2006 08:46
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 13:47 |
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I went to this because I've listened to the show a few times since my mother loves it and enjoyed it. I felt the movie was fairly good. The lighting and atmosphere of the stage and backstage was wonderful, certainly the best part of the movie by far. The acting was great on some parts (Kline, Streep and I love Garrison Keillor) and not so great (Lohan). As said before, don't go if you can't stand farmer music, because there's a lot of it. I found the plot a bit iffy and disjointed at times, but I guess I was expected something closer to the actual show. 4/5
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Jul 16, 2006 18:13
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