A Prairie Home Companion: Critic Reviews

What sustains the film is the performers' belief in their shaggy-dog selves, which is more than just talent -- it's faith.

A late, minor addition to the Robert Altman collection but a treasure all the same A Prairie Home Companion is more likely to inspire fondness than awe.

It's a lovely and loving film.

At its best, it's a gentle meditation on mortality. But at weaker moments it feels meandering and strangely empty.

A Prairie Home Companion tries to embrace the spirit of that longtime radio series but suffocates the very qualities that make the original show so special in the first place.

Altman and Garrison Keillor have turned Keillor's beloved radio show into the sort of backstage entertainment allegory that brings out the best in the director.

Keillor's modest subservience to Altman's group dynamic feels downright gallant, and in the context of the veteran director's most humanistic movie by a wide margin, it certainly has its rewards.

This is a lovely marriage of two of America's wisest cultural observers, native Midwesterners and modern Mark Twains, who value their heritage while occasionally poking it with a stick.

Nondevotees also should find a home in this agreeable, accessible Companion.

Even with its feisty, anti-corporate sympathies, this movie adaptation of Garrison Keillor's beloved Midwestern radio drollery is a breezy affair.

If A Prairie Home Companion is director Robert Altman's swan song, it's a tune with plenty of sweet, rootsy grace notes.

The movie, redolent of death, is a sort of wake, but a funny-sad one, teeming with music, corny jokes, and an ensemble of gifted performers who appear to be having an obscene amount of fun in one another's company.

Emotionally, the movie is a queasy and unsatisfying experience.

What a lovely film this is, so gentle and whimsical, so simple and profound.

Altman's sidewinding tribute to a surprisingly hardy 32-year-old public radio phenomenon is like a 105-minute putter in the garden, with a few songs and some jokes. It's nice.

Good-humored and enormously entertaining but also sentimental and a little dishonest.

A Prairie Home Companion is about small-beer showbiz professionals who face extinction with a smile on their face, a song in their heart, and a biscuit in their belly.

The match between writer/star Garrison Keillor and director Robert Altman is a remarkably fine fit, and the film has a sweet 'September Song' poignancy.

Those who have the sense to seek out this film will find themselves delightfully transported as Altman and screenwriter-star Garrison Keillor tackle issues of time, mortality and family while offering up great dollops of homespun entertainment.

Fans should enjoy A Prairie Home Companion, a movie based on Keillor's satirical radio show, known for its dry Midwestern wit and fake ads for biscuits and duct tape.

It sparkles with a magic all its own as an engagingly performed piece of Midwestern whimsy and stoicism. Mr. Altman's flair for ensemble spectacle and seamless improvisation in the midst of utter chaos is as apparent as ever.

A Prairie Home Companion is about as charming as waking up with a dead animal in your bed.

Rib-ticklingly funny at times and genial as all get-out.

Sketchy, rambling, tune-filled -- and, at best, mildly entertaining.

The movie brings us an old-fashioned radio variety show, in all its glory, and an old-fashioned Robert Altman movie, all ensemble-and-improvisation.