Release Date:  June 9, 2006 (wide)
Rating:  PG-13 (risque humor)
Genre:  Drama
Run Time:  105 min.
Director:  Robert Altman
Actors: Garrison Keillor, Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Lindsay Lohan, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson, Virginia Madsen, Tommy Lee Jones, L.Q. Jones

Years ago, "A Prairie Home Companion" cultivated an audience on public radio by recreating what radio used to be – live broadcasts anchored by storytelling, music, mystery and humor, with sound effects that left much to the imagination.

For today’s "Companion" fans who weren’t weaned on live radio, the program represents something else – a point of contrast to what radio has become. The broadcast is not loud, brash or in-your-face. Not controversial but genial, not adrenaline-fueled but laid back. And, although peppered with product announcements and sponsorships, it retains an independent spirit. It is not overtly corporate.

The warmth of the radio broadcast translates to the new film version of "A Prairie Home Companion," which bucks the conventions of “corporate” cinema. The storyline is loose, the acting often improvised and the soundtrack cacophonous only when it features the trademark overlapping dialogue of its director, Robert Altman. The film is not a breakthrough for Altman, but – like its radio counterpart – what "A Prairie Home Companion" lacks in innovation it makes up for in execution.

Garrison Keillor’s screenplay opens with a scan of a local radio dial in St. Paul, Minn., where "Companion" is set. Traffic on the 5’s, baseball, preaching: It’s what you’ll find on the radio dial in most any town, but these airwaves include a long-running program, "A Prairie Home Companion," recorded at the Fitzgerald Theater. It’s been on the air “since Jesus was in the third grade,” narrator (and radio-show security guard) Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) tells us, but a corporate bad guy (Tommy Lee Jones) plans to bring the show to an end after the evening’s broadcast. Goodbye tradition, goodbye old-time humor, goodbye gainful employment for Guy Noir and the show’s regulars. Hello parking lot.

The melancholy overtone of the film increases as word spreads from one performer to another that the night’s broadcast will be their last. But the show must go on, and the backstage primping, pining and reminiscing constitute the bulk of the film.

We meet a singing sister duo, Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), along with Yolanda’s troubled daughter, Lola (Lindsay Lohan); two guitar-playing cowboys, Lefty and Dusty (John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson); a senior show performer (L.Q. Jones); and a striking, mysterious woman in a white trench coat (Virginia Madsen), sent to the studio on a mission not immediately revealed.