A Prairie Home Companion
Director: Robert Altman
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 1.0
Ye old fashioned radio show A Prairie Home Companion, helmed by the droll Garrison Keillor, is about to go off the air and what better way to represent the end of the show - and the (largely presumed) end of Robert Altman's life as a director - than by dressing up Virginia Madsen in a white trench coat and pretending she's the Angel of Death (you know, like Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire)? Altman's still got his cameras covering a lot of ground - and treating each individual scene as a small joke in itself, cutting right after the (typically dry) punch line - and the musical numbers are thankfully brief (neither Keillor nor Meryl Streep can sing), but this is flaccid and irritating, so desperately in need of vitality or creativity that the celluloid itself could have used the Angel of Life to sprinkle some dust on it or at least say a prayer for it.
