It's not surprising that, at 81 years old and with a transplanted heart, Robert Altman is making a movie about mortality. At this point, let's face it, each movie he makes could be the great director's last. A Prairie Home Companion isn't some maudlin meditation on death, but it is clearly about things winding down, about finding oneself a quaint anachronism in the fast-paced modern world. If it turns out to be Altman's last film, it will be a fitting (if somewhat insubstantial) end.
If not, it'll be j nust another chapter in what Altman referred to at the Oscars as the one long film he's been making his entire career, and probably not the most notable chapter, either. Companion is an adaptation of the long-running radio show hosted by laconic Minnesotan Garrison Keillor, who stars in the film and wrote the screenplay. Fans of the show will no doubt recognize many of its hallmarks, including Keillor's deadpan commercials for fictional sponsors, his ace backing band that tackles country, soul and show tunes with equal aplomb, and characters like Guy Noir, a parody of hard-boiled gumshoes.
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The film's plot, such as it is, follows the final broadcast of the titular show, as Keillor and his cast of regulars fret about their old-fashioned program (a variety show, broadcast live with an audience from a historical theater) getting shut down by a big corporation from Texas that's bought their radio station. In reality, the show continues to air in syndication, broadcast from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, where the movie was filmed.
The farewell gimmick kind of fades in and out like a weak radio signal, and any plot-heavy moments are generally the film's weakest. In addition to the oily representative from the new corporate overlords (Tommy Lee Jones), there's a beautiful woman in a white trench coat (Virginia Madsen) wandering around backstage, who tells everyone that she's an angel of death, the spirit of a former listener who died while tuning in to the show. It's a little too gimmicky and heavy-handed to work, and even when a minor character keels over dead in his dressing room, it seems like little more than a slight inconvenience on the road to putting on a great radio show.
And the show is often great, packed, as is typical for an Altman film, with A-list stars all clearly having a good time. In addition to host Keillor, there's a country-singing sister act (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), a pair of cowboy troubadours (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly), a harried talent wrangler (Maya Rudolph), a sullen teenager (Lindsay Lohan) and Guy Noir himself (Kevin Kline), who provides security. The songs are light and fun, the banter is deadpan and clever, and the whole experience is probably much like listening to the actual show on the radio.
What it's not, however, is much more than that. A few homilies about death aside, the film has nothing more on its mind than telling some jokes and singing some songs. For Keillor's dedicated fans, that's probably more than enough, and the sight of all these talented actors giving life to their favorite radio moments will likely be a great pleasure. For those of us who haven't embraced Keillor's unique charms, though, the radio icon seems more like a grumpy old man roused from a nap and told to go star in a movie, his delivery so dry and detached that it often feels like he's still asleep.
When he's delivering one of his trademark tongue-in-cheek ads for "sponsor" Powdermilk Biscuits, that reticence is charming, but when Altman tries to give him a real character and a romantic past with Streep's wounded country singer (a great performance wasted on a movie that's not about acting), it only comes off as condescending. In a movie about getting older, the curmudgeons end up coming out on top.