More about this DVD  •  DVD Info  •  Movie Main Page  •  Message Board

Whoever said they couldn’t make a good movie out of a radio show never saw Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion. Actually, I said you couldn’t make a good movie out of a radio show. I’m not sure if that statement was ever true, but it’s certainly not true now. The perfect match of director and material, A Prairie Home Companion is based on Garrison Keillor’s long-running National Public Radio program. The show has been airing weekly for about thirty-one years, most if not all from the Fitzgerald Theater in Keillor’s home state of Minnesota. The show is a throwback to a time when banjos were a socially acceptable instrument and Aunt Mabel’s Rhubarb pie was sittin’ on the window sill, coolin’ off a spell. But Keillor’s brand of nostalgia is tinged with satire, various elbows delivered to various ribs. He makes us chuckle at the eccentricities of the bygone era, while simultaneously making us miss them all the same (even if you weren’t even there the first time).

The movie takes place before, during, and after the final performance of A Prairie Home Companion; the show is a casualty of an evil Texan (Tommy Lee Jones), the kind who wears his tie too tight and his lips too thin. Keillor knows this is the final show and there’s a pall around the stage, as if something is being eulogized, even if no one knows they’re at a funeral. Besides Keillor, the stars of the show are Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), the surviving members of a four-sister singing group. Yolanda’s daughter Lola (Lindsay Lohan, pretending she wants to be in real movie) pens suicidal poems. The other performers include singing, joking cowpokes Dusty and Left (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly), and Chuck Akers (L.Q. Jones), who sings as if his life is A Prairie Home Companion. The difficulties in putting together the show are navigated by a frazzled stage manager (Tim Russell) and his fumbling, pregnant assistant (Maya Rudolph). Their job is to fumble through scripts, make sure the next performer is in the on-deck circle, and generally insure the show moves along without a hitch.

And sitting in the eye of the hurricane is Keillor, his face looking like it’s going to slip off his head. He ambles between the stage and the various backstage areas, spinning tales, dispensing wisdom, and looking at everything as if it’s the last time he’ll ever do so, which it is. When it comes to plot, that’s about it. Virginia Madsen plays a mysterious lady- in-white, who we come to assume represents Death. She’s stalked by Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), the production’s longtime detective who seems more Inspector Clouseau than serious gumshoe.  

For Altman, the movie represents a gentle return to form. Now in his 80s, and sporting a brand new heart courtesy of a transplant, Altman (Nashville) is the master of the layered text, the crosscutting of stories and people and events until they all collide into one. Here, his gently floating camera captures people laughing, performing and remembering, all with a melancholy tinge. I was never a fan of the Prairie Home Companion on radio. But I’m very much a fan of the Prairie Home Companion movie. It makes me long for an era I never lived in, a place I’ve never been to, and friends I’ve only just met.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The film’s theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is presented in anamorphic video.  I was not pleased with this transfer. The picture is not very sharp, with only objects in the foreground completely clean and focused. Finely grained textures are merely okay and small object detail is below average. There is plenty of detail in backstage props, etc, but little of it is clearly discernable. Theatrical lighting gives the film some flair, with greens and reds and browns spicing things up. The problems are in the black levels. The picture takes place in dark interiors and in backstage shadows, but too much of the time, the picture is murky, with poor shadow detail. Blacks are solid and smooth, but contrast is off, making the picture murky. Faces lack distinction and flesh tones seem artificial. Shot digitally, the transfer is dirt-free and there’s no grain.  As a document of a long-running radio series, directed by a master like Altman, the transfer deserves better.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio acquits itself much better than the video. The track has a very natural and pleasing live feeling to it. There’s a slight echo to the proceedings, consistent with being in a theater environment. Dialogue, whether spoken or sung, sounds terrifically warm. The music kicks in nicely, with good detail in the strumming of guitar strings and good bass in choir voices and deeper instruments, like the baritone sax. Dynamic range isn’t all that wide, since the whole movie takes place in, essentially, one location over the course of one night. The surrounds are really fun, with various announcements, some of them funny, coming in from the back. A warm track, appropriate to the material. There is also a stereo track. This version sounds okay, too. But it’s a tad constricted, unable to spread out as much as the 5.1 mix. Stick with the 5.1 track if you can.

There are also English and Spanish subtitles.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Considering it’s targeted at an audience that probably doesn’t care a lot about fancy extras, there’s a decent amount here. It starts with Onstage at the Fitzgerald: A Music Companion. This is a collection of extended performances and phony advertisements that appear in the film. The advertising segments are the best, full-length hawking of fictional products like Jen Jensen’s Herring and New Munich Beer.

Come Play With us: A Feature Companion charts the genesis of Keillor’s show and the resulting movie. Keillor and all the major players of the film are interviewed. Keillor begins by saying the radio show got its start in the winter of 1974, when he traveled to Nashville to write an article about the famed Grand Ole Opry. Seeing all those great country acts perform in that great old theater, he was inspired to create his own public-radio version. There’s vintage stills and audio clips from some of Keillor’s Wobegon Boy. The doc, which is about 48-minutes long, then gets into the making of the film. There’s great on-set footage and an interview with Altman (who is, in Keillor’s words, a “benevolent dictator”). It’s a good doc. If you like the radio show and the film, you’ll want to watch this all the way through.

The big extra is the Audio Commentary by director Robert Altman and actor Kevin Kline. It’s “the Bob and Kevin Show”, as Altman calls it. And it’s a punchy, fun little effort. Altman is still cantankerous after all these years (“look how bad all these extras are . . . ”), but he’s older and he needs the friendly and clever Kline to move the commentary along. There’s plenty of silence and plenty of “It’s about 4 in the morning when we shot this” kinds of comments, but there’s good stuff, too. Altman admits he never read the script and can’t remember what was scripted and what was improvised. Any chance to hear Altman, an honorary Oscar winner, pontificate, is gold.

The rest of the extras are throwaways: a Soundtrack Preview (a plug for the CD, with a track listing and song previews), a Theatrical Trailer, and Sneek Peeks of other New Line product like The Nativity Story.  

Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?

There are no DVD-ROM features on this DVD.