A Prairie Home Companion

Starring: Garrison Keillor, Woody Harrelson, Lilly Tomlin, Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Lindsay Lohan, Tommy Lee Jones Directed By: Robert AltmanWritten By: Garrison Keillor and Ken LaZebnikRated PG-13Picturehouse Films

At his best, Robert Altman is a director who makes thoughtful films with a genuine emotional heart. At his best, Garrison Keillor is a storyteller who makes thoughtful musical audio drama and comedy with a genuine emotional heart. However, since both are thoughtful in different ways, Robert Altman’s latest film based on Keillor’s long-running radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion,” is a cinematic beast with two heads that share the same heart. The resulting film isn’t bad – it’s just confused. A collaboration between two different kinds of artists, it doesn’t represent the best work of either.

The story follows the final airing of a fictionalized live radio program based on Keillor’s long-running show. Keillor, himself, co-wrote the script with long-time “Prairie” writer and playwright/screenwriter Ken LaZebnik. One of the things that makes Keillor’s actual radio show so fun is the feeling that the musicians and performers have been working together on it for so long that it’s all as natural to them as a conversation in someone’s backyard.

One of the things that makes Altman such a good director is that he’s fun for actors to work with, so any big project of his is going to attract a lot of big-name Hollywood stars. But big Hollywood stars have big Hollywood schedules, so when they all try to act like they’ve known each other for years it doesn’t quite work. It’s all too apparent that this film is just the next in a long series of projects for them, so the film fails to capture one of the fundamental qualities that makes the radio show so appealing. Look at the cast and picture being at a party with them, and you’ll have some idea of what the film’s like. Each of the big stars has choice moments. Woody Harrelson does his cowboy thing. Tommy Lee Jones does his Texan thing. Kevin Kline does his Kevin Kline thing. All are more or less fun. Of particular note here is Meryl Streep as one  half of a singing sister act from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. There’s a very distinct working-class Northeastern Wisconsin accent that isn’t quite like the way they talk in the Upper Peninsula and Streep nails it almost exactly. Yes, this IS fun, but there’s a subtle discomfort you feel from each of them because they don’t really know each other and they’re being forced to act like they do.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Lindsay Lohan’s performance. Lohan has proven that she’s a very talented actress and it’s nice to see her branching out into projects distinctly unlike the ones in which she’s grown up. Lohan grew up in the center of the frame. She’s always starred or co-starred in feature films. Here she is in a big ensemble piece and you can tell she’s not entirely comfortable. She’s okay in the center of the frame and on those occasions when she’s sharing it with one or even two other actors, but in the big group shots she acts awkward and stilted. Her performance suffers. It’s as though she doesn’t know how to be peripheral. To a certain extent, you get that from every big name actor in the film. It’s too bad they didn’t focus a little more on the people in the film who had ACTUALLY been working on the show for a long time.  VS

Russ Bickerstaff is a local poet and writer. His poems can be heard regularly at Linneman's Monday Poetry Night.