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A Prairie Home Companion is a great tapestry of storytelling. On the evening of the last show before being bought out and consumed by a corporate rival, the cast members of the show attempt to come to terms with the end of their long-running radio installment. The movie seems to take place mostly in real time as the final show unfolds. Each member has his or her own personal story and the show has meant something unique in each of their lives. We only catch glimpses of these characters' lives, like you would when making conversation with new acquaintances at a dinner party. But we also catch brief glimpses of the pain, frustration or beauty in each of them. We don't get to know them well but we get to know them well enough to see their humanity. Even when a beloved cast member drops dead backstage after his final performance, we see the grief in these characters and subsequently the resilience in them to remember him lovingly--and even use a bit of humor to dull the pain. The little bits of drama weaved in between heartfelt down home songs, goofy advertising jingles and the even goofier songs played by Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly, respectively) are perfect counterpoints. It takes a wise and perhaps grizzled man to stare death in the eye and not flee from it--whether it be the death of a friend, death of a radio show or death of a comfortable way of life. Garrison Keillor is wonderful in this role and brings a bit of grace to the idea that you can't control change, you can only control how you react to it. How fitting that this was director Robert Altman's final show as well.

I won't repeat what a lot of the one-stars here are saying, much of which I agree with. It wasn't the plotlessness and the stereotyping that truly bothered me the most, it was the supposition behind this project that oozes out in every line and incident. First of all, let me say that the final sequence and credits is the best part of the film, the performance of "In the Sweet By and By," because this is what Prairie Home Companion (PHC) has been (and still is) about, passing some of the great traditions of the American past on to present generations. The songs Garrison Keillor uses in his shows ("Sweet By and By", "John Henry," etc.) are some of the greatest cultural products of our nation, and his show makes these songs really human, often by building a story around them.

But that aspect doesn't come across in the film. More importantly, the most important part of PHC, the audience, is COMPLETELY missing in this film! Only once, at the very beginning when they are filing in to the theatre, do we see an audience - a sort of stereotypical "geeky" Minnesota audience, I might add. We never really hear them at all throughout the show and pretty much forget that there even is anybody out there! The audience, both in the theatres and at home/car/wherever, are what make PHC what it is. When Garrison Keillor tells a story you can hear the audience respond in recognition of some of the characters he describes or laugh at an incident that reminds them of something that happened in their own family. I can't believe that GK supposedly wrote this screenplay and left out the audience. Here is my take on it - for better or worse - the portrayal of a modern audience as a real character in PHC would give the impression that the show is alive and current and meaningful to a present-day audience (which it is and continues to be) - with old songs brought up to date with current events and situations, both political and social. But the director and Hollywood production team don't want to do that. Hollywood is in the business of tearing down culture, not shoring it up. So PHC is an old out-of-date artifact - it's supposed to have lost its meaning in today's sound-byte cynical world. But of course anyone who listens to or has attended a PHC show knows this is not at all the case. This movie therefore is NOT about PHC. It's about Hollywood poking fun (yet again) at another institution of American Culture. Hollywood doesn't really like success stories that aren't about Hollywood, and the 30+ year success of an NPR radio show with an audience that is comfortable mixing old-fashion values with a modern sensibility is just too outrageous for them, so Hollywood producers have to show all these characters as has-beens, dotty, self-absorbed, and - perhaps the most egregious - unprofessional, which is clearly not the case in reality.

And once again, I should add, Hollywood is taking pot-shots at generational differences. The young people - of which there is only one in this movie! - are "cool," while the old people are sentimental idiots. That last scene in the diner is one of the most objectionable in the entire film. The daughter, who has just been humiliated in the previous scene by being forced to sing a song onstage - NOTE: how "unprofessional" is this? - and now she gets her revenge. She doesn't even have time to hang up from her cell phone call to have a conversation with her mom. Her mom is a brainless nincompoop who doesn't know anything about money, while the daughter is oh-so sophisticated. She breezes in, says some insulting things to her mom - which her mom has earned, right? - and then breezes back out on her phone. Once again, the older people who have the knowledge and experience, even what should be the professionalism, are here portrayed as the clueless ones. I wish that Meryl Streep would have refused to play the scene. But then the whole movie was set up that way right from the beginning, with the Streep and Tomlin characters. These two actresses were fabulous in what seemed like an long ad-lib at the beginning, but unfortunately it just set the characters up to be pitied and, eventually, written-off, even by their own offspring. Really sad. And totally against the theme of PHC.

Anyway, the radio show still runs, I know many people who listen every week and love it (and learn from it) - and it is still a wonderful mix of old and new, the traditional and the crazy present. There are lots of young people and often phenomenal guests on the show, and it reminds us of what real VARIETY shows were about, and should still be about: reaching out to a wide audience and makes people laugh, not at someone else, but at themselves - it reminds them that humanity only means something when it's shared.