Endings In Mediocrity; A Prairie Home Companion: The Motion Picture

The Good: Moments where the dry wit is funny, Casting (I suppose)
The Bad: Dull, Little in the way of character or character development, Dull
The Basics: As the radio show A Prairie Home Companion winds down, performers on it talk backstage, embodying the humor of Garrison Keillor.


In my travels, I've encountered a certain snobbery from NPR listeners who almost universally assume that those who do not enjoy the dry wit ramblings of radio entertainer Garrison Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion simply do not understand him. There's a highbrow assumption that if one does not find the show funny, the lack of humor is in poor, ignorant listener who does not appreciate classy, subtle humor. I "get" Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion's humor but it just doesn't entertain me. When I recently spelled Keillor's name wrong in my panning of Marie Antoinette (reviewed here!) and I was corrected by no less than three fellow reviewers within 12 hours, I decided my penance would be to sit through the cinematic version of A Prairie Home Companion.

Set on the night of the final episode of A Prairie Home Companion, the radio show is taping before a live theatrical audience as they present down-home stories of living in Wisconsin (though Lake Wobegon is never directly mentioned). While G.K. does his monologues and fake commercials, entertainers from the show talk backstage about the demise of the radio program. As well, security guard Noir is hunting a woman in a white trench coat who he believes might save the show. As the night winds down, old tensions between G.K. and ex-lover Yolanda Johnson flare, lewd cowboy entertainers Dusty and Left irk the standards and practices director, and Noir encounters the woman in white.

I "get" the idea of this film of A Prairie Home Companion; while the actual show is going on on-stage, the performers are telling stories and singing and such to present a parallel show backstage. While G.K. tells the stories up front to the radio audience, the film audience is treated to a similar show. It's not a terribly complicated concept. The thing is, it's not terribly exciting, either.

It takes a lot to make a radio show interesting to watch. It's why it's somewhat baffling that Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern and others have simply stuck a camera in their studios at different points when making their radio presentations and pretended that makes the radio show a television series. It does not. It's watching a guy make radio. And it's about that entertaining.

A Prairie Home Companion, this movie, is not that unentertaining. Instead, the parallel stories go a long way to solving the problem of making a film out of people talking into microphones. Here, instead, the movie wisely neglects the theater performance as much as possible in favor of the backstage activity for as much of the movie as possible.

But therein, too, are the challenges of the movie; the backstage "antics" (if they can be called that) are the embodiment of the dry wit of the radio program. So, while Keillor describes mid-westerners in dry tones with subtle wit and little affect, backstage we see their antics. And for the most part, they're just entertainers telling one another stories in their particular idiom. So, for example, there's nothing extraordinary about Lola Johnson, Yolanda's daughter, as she talks in unemotive tones about her suicide poetry. And the very stereotypical way her aunt Rhonda and mother simply talk over her with generic feel-good sentiments falls as flat in the actualization as it does in Keillor's routine.

So, it's something we GET, it's just not something that's terribly entertaining and, in the litmus test for a movie, it's not interesting to watch. That's important for understanding why A Prairie Home Companion (the film) fails; it simply does not utilize the medium in a way that takes advantage of what cinematic presentation can do. I shudder to think of what the commentary track is like; with actors talking over people talking. I mean, truly, what do you do on a commentary track about a movie about people sitting around telling stories?! It must be surreal, listening to people tell stories about people telling stories.

My point here is that the film captures little entertainment value of the live performance of the radio show A Prairie Home Companion. In fact, the only things we SEE that we would not have heard of the performance are G.K. ad-libbing his way through a monologue on duct tape, hindered by the improvisations of Yolanda, and Yolanda's expressions of anger and hurt toward G.K. as her old feelings resurface.

I did laugh once during this movie and that was when G.K. is talking to Lola about her conception, which was based on him abandoning her father at a rest stop, where he met Yolanda and had a chance encounter. He dryly declares, "You're the best mistake I never made." It's not enough to justify the 104 other minutes of the movie.

As for the acting, it's nothing to shout out about. The acting is more a function of decent casting than actual performances in this film. So, for example, if I was going to make a movie with singing cowboys telling one another dirty jokes, Woody Harrelson would seem to be a natural choice for one of them. And he fits the role, but it's nothing that challenges our expectations of Harrelson or him as an actor. Similarly, Lily Tomlin as a country singer and Kevin Kline as an out-of-work gumshoe all fit. No one is better cast for his role (save Keillor himself, essentially playing himself) than Tommy Lee Jones who enters the film late as the axeman, the new company's representative come to kill the show.

So, it's nothing new or special and it barely has the entertainment value of the radio show. It's a shame that Robert Altman's final directoral outing was something so limited. Then again, with its pervasive theme of endings, perhaps it is appropriate.

For other works with Maya Rudolph, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Bridesmaids
50 First Dates
As Good As It Gets

5/10

For other movie reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Gosford Park Illustrates Both Sides Of The Social Mirror!

The Good: Most of the acting, Elements of characterization (when characters actually are granted character here!).
The Bad: Direction, Far too many characters
The Basics: Quick camera cuts and an abundance of characters makes Gosford Park a less than inspired murder mystery.


Every now and then, there comes a film we want to like. Right out, we want to be prejudiced toward it and feel like we want to recommend it on some intangible level alone. Gosford Park was one of those films for me, when I first picked it up. Then I watched it.

Gosford Park is, most simply, a story about London in 1932 when several upper class folks get together for a shooting party and bring their servants. The film is split between the world of the rich and those who wait upon them. Rather cleverly shot, there is not a single scene that does not have a member of the serving staff present to witness the actions and words of the wealthy. Being that this is more than just a social treatise, there are all sorts of intrigues that appear to center around Sir William McCordle, whose estate the action of the film occurs on. The intrigues include questionable heredity, questionable marital status, infidelity, promiscuity, and questionable social standing as well as economic shortages and professional envy. The plot reaches a peak when McCordle himself is killed. All of the intrigues lead any one of the characters to have a solid motive for murder.

And there are a ton of characters. There are no less than eleven wealthy primary characters and their servants. At a minimum, then, there are twenty-two people competing for airtime in this two hour, eighteen minute flick. There's a reason I only mention Sir William; there are too many others to mention to do justice to the characters. In fact, I believe it impossible to give a description (or even listing) of the characters that would make the film sound either remotely interesting or without giving everything away. Either way, the list would be quite long.

Therein lies one of the film's major problems. There are too many characters to keep track of. I'm not saying that like some nincompoop; I have an eye for detail that noticed the bottle of poison in the first scene and that it was moved to the left side the next time it was seen. The problem was not in the details, it was in the sheer number of people to attempt to keep track of. Several of them look similar enough to be problematic.

In this case, I think part of the fault sits with the film's director. I know it's heresy to claim Robert Altman isn't the best director in the universe, but in this particular film, his directing is problematic. In an effort to create an atmosphere that is filled with movement and the sense of busy urgency like that of a waiting staff - which Altman does wonderfully here - he sacrifices the chance to focus on the characters and deliver any genuine sense of personality to the characters.

The lone exception to this is Mary, the servant to the Countess. Mary becomes the focus of the film as the only one who seems to be able to put together the truth about the murder and a few other of the plot lines. On a character level, this is problematic because there is another character whose entire place in the film seems to be to live both sides of the wall. His name is Henry Denton and his character would have been an ideal one to figure everything out as he lives - in the film - as both a servant and later as a man of some importance in the social circle upstairs.

But, this is not the way the film goes. It becomes Mary's film as she unwittingly puts together the pieces in the murder that the arrogant Inspector never does. Bully for her.

The main problem is that it's hard to care who committed the murder because Sir William was unlikable and everyone wanted him dead. But more than that, any of the people who could have killed him never live up to their full potential of being even a remotely interesting or developed character.

Conversely, the acting in Gosford Park is wonderful. Mary is played wonderfully by Kelly McDonald. She makes the role both naive and knowing, balancing the two with facial expressions and subtle eye movements that clue us in to her very thoughts. The always wonderful Emily Watson appears as one of the head servants doing her usual fabulous job of being something more than simply eye candy. And while the film is littered with wonderful actors giving great performances, - the list truly is too long to go into - Richard E. Grant steals every scene he's in as George. Not the best character necessarily, but well played by Grant and every time he's on the screen, his presence demands attention.

So, who would like this film? Beats me. I think it's ideal for people who like those stuffy PBS BBC imports. It's slow, confused on the character level and sometimes melodramatic. But it does have moments of humor and it is a murder mystery. Did it grab me? No. I think The Usual Suspects and Bound (reviewed here!) are far superior. But if you wanted the 1932 stuffy British slow to develop answer to the action and mystery of those films, well then, I suppose Gosford Park would be a place you might want to hang out.

For other British dramas, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
The English Patient
A Room With A View
Elizabeth

6/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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