DVD Club: A Prairie Home Companion

[Barcalounger]

I didn't see a discussion thread on this started yet. I watched it with my family over the weekend, and I must say that I enjoyed it thoroughly. As did everyone I watched it with. I might be a bit biased since I consider myself a casual fan of the radio program (I always enjoy the random 10 minutes I catch in the car), but my dad really liked it even though he had no clue it was based on a real thing.

Many times in a film with this many famous actors in it, you get the feeling that half of them are phoning it in. But Altman really got some good performances out of them, and the timing between characters was excellent. Especially good in my opinion were the Woody Harrelson and John C. Reily cowboys, who cracked me up in every scene. Especially in their last musical number. The film moves along briskly, I never got lost in the multitude of plot lines, and when it was over I wanted more. Garreson Keeler is also great in playing himself, an old relic of a great time long since past.

My wife didn't much like the angel of death plot line, but I thought it fit in perfectly. The film is essentially about the death: the death of a show, the death of a cast member, the death of small radio stations being gulped up by clear channel, a teenager's obsession with death, and the death of a way of life in the plains. The radio show has always been a stylized fictional version of a section of the real world, so the inclusion of a walking talking angel gave the audience the clue that this film was just a stylized fictional version of the production of this radio show.