Director Robert Altman and writer Garrison Keillor join forces with an all-star cast to create a comic backstage fable, "A Prairie Home Companion," about a fictitious radio variety show that has managed to survive in the age of television. Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin star as the Johnson Sisters, Yolanda and Rhonda, a country duet act that has survived the county-fair circuit, and Lindsay Lohan plays Meryl's daughter, Lola, who gets her big chance to sing on the show and then forgets the words. Kevin Kline is Guy Noir, a private eye down on his luck who works as a backstage doorkeeper, and Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are Dusty and Lefty, the Old Trailhands, a singing cowboy act. Add Virginia Madsen as an angel and Tommy Lee Jones as the Axeman and Maya Rudolph as a pregnant stagehand and Keillor in the role of hangdog emcee, and you have a playful story set on a rainy Saturday night in St. Paul, Minnesota, where fans file into the Fitzgerald Theater to see "A Prairie Home Companion," a staple of radio station WLT, not knowing that WLT has been sold to a Texas conglomerate and that tonight's show will be the last.

MOVIE REVIEW

When some people hear the name Robert Altman, they picture an acclaimed filmmaker who always seems to rear his head at the Oscars in some form or another. When I hear Robert Altman, no matter how hard I try, I think of "Gosford Park," which, while a critical darling, was one of the dumbest, most pointless and most boring movies I have ever watched. So, with great trepidation did I plug "A Prairie Home Companion" into my DVD player... and how pleasantly I was surprised.
Read our Prairie Home Companion, A movie review »