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|  | |  | | | A Prairie Home Companion | | | | | SKU:
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Usually ships in 1 business days | | | | | | Robert Altman directs an all-star ensemble cast in this cinematic adaptation of one of public radio's longest running hit shows - Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. Still going strong as ever, PHC is heard every weekend by over 4 million listeners each week on over 580 radio stations around the world! | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Actors: | Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen | | Director: | Robert Altman | | Format: | Closed-captioned, Color, Full Screen, NTSC | | Language: | English | | Subtitle: | English, Spanish | | Number of Discs: | 1 | | Studio: | New Line Home Video | | Run Time: | 106 minutes | | DVD Release Date: | October 10, 2006 | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 178 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 178 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
105 of 119 found the following review helpful:
 Death and awful jokes: A wonderful Prairie Home Companion Jun 15, 2006
By C. O. DeRiemer
I wish I'd said this: A Prairie Home Companion is a lovely film about death, and with some great bad jokes. Death and how we deal with it drifts through the film like a dream, but it turns out to be real. Word has gotten around that the 30-year-old radio program is giving its last show. The theater where it has been broadcast from all these years has been sold and will be turned into a parking lot. A woman in a white trench coat moves dream-like through the place, searching for a person whose time has come, and then finds him. And then she finds another. Memories of past successes are talked about, but sometimes not. Reminiscences are wept over or laughed over. The backstage emergencies happen and are dealt with and the radio show goes on. It's just a marvelous movie. People who dislike the actual A Prairie Home Companion will probably not like this movie. Those who do like the radio show I'm sure are going to run out and buy the DVD of the movie as soon as it's available.
Garrison Keillor is not center stage so much as he's the imperturbable head guy who isn't always there, even when he's there. Most of the regular members of the radio show are present, as well as some new names. Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep are incredibly authentic and incredibly funny/poignant as the two remaining members, Rhonda and Yolanda Johnson, of a country-music family singing group. Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are great as the dim cowboys, Lefty and Dusty. Their bad-jokes song is one of the highlights. Guy Noir looking like Kevin Kline tries to keep a lid on the crises. Streep and Tomlin (and Harrelson and Reilly) sing their own stuff and they are first class. Tomlin, in particular, gives a terrific performance as Rhonda, tough, funny, a little bitter and a trooper.
After 105 minutes you may find death not too frightening, may find a kind of comforting acceptance of life, and may find funny some awful jokes...like the name of the country song Lefty sang on last week's show, "I'll Give You My Moonshine If You Show Me Your Jugs." Or a great new wheezer, "Did you hear about the crate of Viagra that was stolen?" "No! Who took it?" "The cops don't know but they're looking for hardened criminals."
I also wish I'd said this, from the New York Times: A Prairie Home Companion isn't great, it's wonderful.
23 of 26 found the following review helpful:
 An entertaining radio experience! Jun 10, 2006
By Maurice Williams
"mauricewms"
This is definitely one of the most entertaining film experiences I've had in a while. Garrison Keillor plays himself in this musical dramady that depicts the sundown performance of the popular National Public Radio program "A Prairie Home Companion". Robert Altman directs the screenplay by Keillor. The film is nostalgic in timbre with elements of noir detective mystery. Keillor's dry and straight-faced humor coupled with the stellar performances of the star studded caste makes this film a must see. I saw it in a packed theatre which helped create the experience of actually being in the audience of the real show. As the show's last performance ensues, we are given a look into the private lives of the shows performers and the past life of one of the show's listeners. "A Prairie Home Companion" is smart, funny and musically astute, just like the real show. NPR fans will get an extra lift from this flick but anyone with a bit of wit and an ear for great story telling is bound to find this movie enjoyable. Highly Recommended!
64 of 81 found the following review helpful:
Funeral for a Tuxedoed Penguin Jun 19, 2006
By Samuel Chell
No movie has packed more punch than Robert Altman's "Nashville" as a criticism of life, a chilling yet exhilarating dissection of a culture incapable of living the examined life. Altman was in control with that film, seizing upon a "real" place as a microcosmic landscape of mid-1970's America, then orchestrating the actions of characters who ironically have lost their place. But Garrison Keillor is himself the personification of control, a highly skilled literary and dramatic artist not the least of whose creations is the wise and witty persona serving as host of his faux-retro radio show, which is his own criticism of life.
Altman captures Keillor's cosmos, but nowhere does it acquire the life-like authenticity of "Nashville," "The Player," or "Gosford Park." The ironies that Altman's camera normally exposes have already been attended to by another ironist of undeniable brilliance. This is Keillor country, ordered exactly as its creator writes, acts, narrates, and sings it. I've attended a broadcast of "Prairie Home Companion" and found it curiously distant and unengaging, my presence and that of the rest of the audience serving as props, or a bit of window dressing, for the purpose of establishing the show's credibility for a home audience. In fact, the entire premise of the movie is absurd--the last broadcast of a folksy variety radio show that was never more than a contrived simulation from the start. As a place, Nashville took itself seriously. By contrast, Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" has the feeling of those small town renovations with anachronistic gas lanterns, pricey soda fountains and quaint antique shops. It's clever, even artful, kitsch, yet Keillor makes it work, often putting his finger on what is most genuine and real, the repressed stuff of consciousness suddenly taking on a welcome familiarity.
One of the throwaway jokes in the film turns out to be a matter of life and death: One penguin asks another, "Why do you appear to be wearing a tuxedo?" The other penguin answers,"Why would you think I'm not?" No matter that the joke was responsible for the angel of death who shadows the characters in the show; it's also a reminder that there's no reason we shouldn't trust Keillor's sleight of hand. "Reality radio show" or not, "Prairie Home Companion" becomes the stage for a strangely compelling essay on time and change, chance and paradox, the presence of absence (the bust of F. Scott Fitzgerald). The final scene of the film is lifted from Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," when the angel of death walks in on the diners, assembled this time not at a Knight's castle at Elsinore but at Mickey's Cafe in St. Paul. It's a deeply affecting moment, one that moreover has the effect of bringing the audience in on Keillor's literary conceit--an inclusion I missed when I attended the actual production. Keillor shares with Altman cynicism about many features of the present mediascape as well as an elegiac attitude toward a gentler, more cohesive American community. Like the reader who's finished James Joyce's "The Dead," the spectator at the end of this film is at one with a human community of equals, embraced by the ties that bind.
As a movie "A Prairie Home Companion" is at once more lively, colorful and honest than it is as a variety show. Altman serves Keillor well, no less than Meryl Streep serves the director, enabling him to compose shots that are too warm and glowing to be forgettable images merely. In fact, in her second appearance on the show within the show, Streep's singing a song about her childhood past reprises and nearly equals the soulful, heart-stirring moment in "Nashville" when Ronee Blakey performs the song "Dues."
Perhaps this film, which is at once archetypal and particular, allegorical and human, will be the octogenarian filmmaker's farewell. Deep down, however, I hope that a film we might regard as Keillor's film-directing debut doesn't wind up being Altman's swan song. There's got to be another "Nashville" in the protean imagination of the great director--perhaps like Shakespeare's "The Tempest" a film allowing him a fitting valediction to his cinematic magic while ushering us into a brave new world.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
The Cinema From Lake Wobegon Jun 25, 2006
By Scott T. Rivers
Robert Altman turns Garrison Keillor's long-running radio show into a truly unique experience. In less capable hands, this celluloid translation could have been disastrous. However, Altman is the perfect filmmaker to capture Keillor's musical and storytelling charm. An impressive cast (Woody Harrelson, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, John C. Reilly, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin) complements Keillor's radio ensemble with their comedic and vocal talents. Though a bit pretentious at times (Virginia Madsen's "Dangerous Woman" gradually wears out her welcome), Altman and Keillor maintain a comfortable tone of lighthearted nostalgia. Not for all tastes, but a must for any "Prairie Home Companion" listener.
13 of 15 found the following review helpful:
Get a Life!! It's a Movie!! And it is a Lot of Fun!!!! Sep 03, 2006
By John R. Linnell
It seems from the reviews on here that if you like the radio show, you will like/love the movie. If not, you don't get it.
Maybe that is fair. I do like/love the show, even though GK and I do not agree on much politically and I sure loved this movie.
A Prarie Home Companion is just that. It is a companion. It warms you. Makes you laugh, smile and shed a tear or two. Keeps your toes tapping to the music and invites you to join in and harmonize. It shows you the talents of some people you didn't know they had (Meryl Streep is a terrific CW singer as is Lily Tomlin and Woody Harrelson looks more like Dusty than Dusty ever did.) Kevin Kline is Kevin Kline and that is all anyone could want. GK doesn't tell us about Lake Wobegone, but that is the only disappointment he delivers in this tale of the last show.
Every actor and participant are first rate, the songs are to keep with you forever and it is a jewel to hold close and put in your DVD library when it is finally released.
See all 178 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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