Well this evening was nice. It was so slow at work that they sent me home at 5:30pm. So I stopped by my friendly neighborhood Blockbuster to see what New Releases were out. I came upon “A Prairie Home Companion,” a movie I wanted to see in theaters but never got around to. If you don’t listen to NPR much, A Prairie Home Companion is a radio variety show that has been on the air since 1974. It is broadcast from St Paul, Minnesota each Saturday night. It includes story-telling, music & comedy.
I got hooked on Prairie Home a few years ago. My brother and I would take random road trips and he really liked to listen to NPR. I’m usually not a big fan but if it was a Saturday night we could both agree for at least two hours with Prairie Home.
So when I heard there was a movie I knew I wanted to see it. It was interesting. Garrison Keller is the creator of Prairie Home and he wrote the screenplay. He took one of the characters from his show, Guy Noir, and made him the narrator. The movie follows the entire cast of the show on their last show. A large corporation has bought out the family company and is closing them down. This is a wonderful comedy but most of the jokes are based on either their wittiness or their dryness. There is some physical comedy but most of it just relies on Keller’s dead-pan sense of humor.
This is a movie I would highly suggest and it has an all-star cast.