Written by: Susan Granger
www.susangranger.com

Radio wasn't always just computerized music and blowhards spewing political bile. Once upon a time, there were auditory vaudeville shows, like Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion," which is still syndicated, weekly, on National Public Radio.

"This radio show is the kind of program that died 50 years ago," someone remarks, "only someone forgot to tell the performers."

So idiosyncratic filmmaker Robert Altman, Keillor, and Ken LaZebnik have created a fictional tale based on the real-life Minnesota-based program that's been on the air since 1974. Set on a rainy Saturday night at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, it's the final broadcast of the show, hosted by the laid-back, philosophical Keillor (playing himself) and chock full of quirky characters - a typically eccentric Altman ensemble.

Acting as narrator, there's Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), a down-on-his-luck detective working as backstage security guard. The garrulous Johnson sisters, Yolanda (Meryl Streep) and Rhonda (Lily Tomlin), are country music singers from the county-fair circuit, along with Yolanda's sulky, suicide-obsessed daughter, Lola (Lindsay Lohan). The Old Trailhands, Dusty (Woody Harrelson) and Lefty (John C. Reilly), are clueless cowboys crooning bawdy ditties. Plus, there's a blonde angel-of-death in a white trench coat (Virginia Masden), a very pregnant stagehand (Maya Rudolph) and the Axeman (Tommy Lee Jones), representing the Texas conglomerate that bought the radio station.

Amid the whimsical, folksy anecdotes, droll jingles for fake products and country western/gospel music, there's a charming, genial, easy-going camaraderie that masks the innate complexity of the collaborative concept, smoothly interweaving improvisational backstage stories with overlapping voices and contrasting soundplays - and kudos to Edward Lachman's mobile cameras.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "A Prairie Home Companion" is an evocative, endearing, nostalgic 9, a gleefully amusing glimpse of down-home Americana.