Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) is a hard-boiled character working security at the radio program 'A Prairie Home Companion' and it's the last night on the air. Garrison Keillor brings some great A-list stars into his movie. There is also the master director Robert Altman. Dusty (Woody Harrelson) and Lefty (John C. Reilly) are cowboy singing duo. Virginia Madsen plays the mysterious woman in white. Yolanda (Meryl Streep) and Rhonda Johnson (Lily Tomlin) are sister singing duo as Yolanda tries to get her daughter Lola (Lindsay Lohan) to sing with them.I have never heard the radio show. I'm not really a fan of this kind of music. The good reviews and Robert Altman attracted me to the movie. There is barely anything here for me. It's obvious to say this movie meanders. That is part of Altman's style. However I have a hard time find anything compelling in this. It became very repetitive for me. Keillor has the presence of a stuffy college professor. The A-list cast is interesting but then they add an actress like Lohan. It's not that she does a horrible job as much as she sticks out like a sore thumb. This is just not a movie for me.

Entering into an Altman film is exactly that - 'entering'. We're never properly introduced to the characters as much as we are dropped into their world and made to keep track of the faces we meet along the way. Watching A Prairie Home Companion is to see a the great joy of creation - actors, writers, designers, musicians all allowed to roam free and do what they do best. The film is a sprawling homage to the radio show, and fans will find a lot to enjoy here. Familiar characters played by familiar actors pop in an out of each scene, giving the impression of a large family enjoying each others company. Though there was a working script, very little of the film feels scripted. Scenes flow from one chapter to another with a fast paced choreography which nods back to previous Altman films like 'Nashville', the action all taking place in a contained space, the actors playing off each other like a ping-pong tournament. This being Altman's final film - the woman in white no doubt signifies a lot more than might have been intended. You get the feeling that he felt the end was coming, and that he damn better well have fun before he got there.

The film tells the story of a radio group who are performing for the last time. The film is full of scenes on backstage as well as on stage. There are numerous songs. The lives of these people have been shown in the film. And to be exact their last day is being shown in the radio show. While there is no particular Antagonist or the Protagonist, everyone is doing their own job. I liked the idea of the film.PROS: The film presents a very nice backstage Ambiance. The performances by all were amazing. The way they handled things when something goes wrong on the stage was awesome. There is a lot of overlapping dialogs in the films which will induce some confusion in your mind and at the same time make you to listen to them carefully. The sound mixing was good as for the whole time, the songs were being sung on the stage and they had to be intermingled with the backstage talks. The more important thing that was conveyed in the film was that the performers were so old but then also they had the same energy to perform. Because that is what they love doing. There was no hatred among the performers on the stage and that was very nice to see.CONS: Sometimes the comedy looked too much and did not looked funny but a little absurd. The cast did not perform weirdly or overly acted but that the situations looked too obvious. Sometimes you might feel bored also because the film is slow. But in all it is a subtle comedy.MESSAGE: "Where there is will there is way." VERDICT: "A recommended watch."

"I died laughing" is a cliché. Except that she and her boyfriend are in a car when they hear a joke on the radio: "Two penguins are standing on an ice-floe. One says to the other--'You look like you're wearing a tuxedo.' The second responds: 'What makes you think I'm not?'" Whereupon the driver of the car laughs so hard, he loses control of the car and kills them both. Virginia Madsen is a ghost who 'died laughing.' Not figuratively, but really: she died laughing. The radio show is about to die, a character in the show dies, and the person who has bought the theater dies--or more accurately they all get killed--Hear the comic's triumph: "I killed them!" The characters are all imbued with death, with killing the audience, with dying--but never on stage. The comedic cry "I killed them" matched by its opposite "I died" to signify failure to get the joke across. The difference between 'killing' and 'dying' presents a huge metaphysical distance.But A Prairie Home Companion is about telling a story by leaps and bounds, by twists and turns; and the story happens to be about death, killing, and dying.Guy Noir is a Garrison Keillor's (imaginary) doppelganger/twin; imaginary and hence not living. Garrison Keillor, story teller, would rather be Guy Noir cheap dime-novel detective. Look at the DVD cover: There's Kevin Kline as Guy Noir--really Garrison Keillor--center stage and there's Garrison Keillor on the edge of the photo looking sideways towards the camera, slightly annoyed that his (imaginary) doppelganger has taken center stage.The stories Garrison Keillor tells are slice of life stories. Nothing more: no profound moral, no depiction of great character, no life/soul altering crisis. A story about something. Better than Seinfeld's 'story about nothing' because with Keillor, the story is recited on radio where sound is to play on the listener's imagination--where action comes alive. (Note dead television versus live radio.)A Prairie Home Companion occurs in the Fitzgerald Theatre where Garrison Keillor did his thang on the radio before a live theatre audience (as opposed to a dead studio audience?). And so the musical performances--more than ably performed by the cast--are simply part of the story line that really doesn't contribute to the story line. But darn good listening.And in the end, the strange woman who seems to kill off a lot of people can't kill the spirit of people who are no longer working in theater. A Prairie Home Companion, like all simple stories, has that element of complexity which makes the story work. A ghost matched by the pregnant stage manager.I remember listening to his program in the 1980s with my young daughter on Connecticut's NPR Saturday nights at supper time and just before the Muppets, the highlight of the weekend. The movie was an evocation for me of time past, time gone, time not forgotten. And a way of presenting death and dying.