A Prairie Home Companion

Rib-ticklingly funny at times and genial as all get-out, Robert Altman's take on Garrison Keillor's three-decades-old Minnesota institution is about nothing more or less than the privileged musical and behavioral moments created by the engagingly diverse cast...

Not since Woody Allen's "Radio Days" has anyone created such a cinematic Valentine to the wonderfully imaginative medium of radio as "A Prairie Home Companion."...

Because it's a Robert Altman film, because it's written by Garrison Keillor, because it's a spin-off of a well-loved radio show, because Meryl Streep is in it and looks cheerful, because a lot of other people are in it who usually know better, "Prairie Home Companion" hovers for a while in a glow of audience goodwill...This is not one of the good Altmans. This isn't even one of the mediocre Altmans...

Director Robert Altman thinks it's about death. Writer Garrison Keillor thinks it's a light comedy. They're both right. But this screen take on Keillor's three-decades-running public-radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, is something else as well: a delectable antidote to the hard-sell sideshow of Hollywood...

What a lovely film this is, so gentle and whimsical, so simple and profound. Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion" is faithful to the spirit of the radio program, a spirit both robust and fragile, and yet achieves something more than simply reproducing a performance of the show. It is nothing less than an elegy, a memorial to memories of times gone by, to dreams that died but left the dreamers dreaming, to appreciating what you've had instead of insisting on more...

Robert Altman's last film, a spinoff of a radio institution, is a homage to that institution and cracking old-time entertainment...

The story is ultimately as forgettable as any of the folksy musical numbers that are sung, but your toes will still be tapping when you get up to leave...