Before going to see

A PRAIRIE HOME COMAPNION, I have to admit I'd never heard the show on radio, since it doesn't play up here in Canada that I can find. I was aware of Garrison Keillor, but hadn't really heard the radio show this was based on.

Keillor concocted the screenplay about a radio show very much like the one he's been broadcasting since July 1974 from St. Paul, Minn. With the exception of scenes in a diner, The entire movies takes place as a "fictional" show prepares for the last show before the theatre they use is torn down by the Texas conglomerate for a parking lot.

But no big deal is made of the occasion, as the cast treats it like it's just another show. Robert Altman follows the various performers both onstage and backstage, capturing their quirks and private agendas, as their personal and private lives mix.

Its a tool Altman has used many times, including in his films about other artistic backdrops, such as "The Company" (dance), "Kansas City" (jazz), "Ready-to-Wear" (fashion), "The Player" (film), "Vincent & Theo" (painting) and "Nashville" (country music). Altman's first significant professional job was as a radio writer, and while the film doesn't concern itself with the craft and mechanics, there is a comfort with the setting that dovetails with Altman's evident delight in the performers he's put in front of the camera.

Many of the characters are carried over from Keillor's actual radio show: cowboy crooners Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly), whose ongoing banter culminates in a final number, "Bad Jokes," in which the off-color lyrics are indeed as bad as they are hilarious. Adding more down-home flavor is L.Q. Jones as a vet country singer. Private Detective "Guy Noir" I'm told is one of the COMPANION'S most long time and memorable characters, and for the context of the movie is slightly rejigged as a chronically underemployed P.I., who does security for the show. The part is played wonderfully by Kevin Kline in 40's threads and attitudes.

As well as being narrator, Guy is supposed to keep an eye on things but gets distracted by a mysterious blonde (Virginia Madsen) who materializes to incorporate herself into the proceedings in unforeseeable ways.

But the most prominent characterss here are Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson (Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin), the surviving half of what used to be a promising quartet of sisters. In the company of Yolanda's teen daughter Lola (Lindsay Lohan), who writes suicide poetry, the two gals yack on in wacky ways about family, special memories and disappointments.

All through the show, GK refuses to acknowledge that it's the finale. "Every show's your last show. That's my philosophy," he explains. Nor will he mention it when one cast member dies offstage during the broadcast; "I don't do eulogies." Where these quips may have come from Keillor, I can imagine what kind of meanings they would have for Altman, who was 80 when he filmed the movie. The films fleeting style doesn't betray for a moment. The spectre of death, or something like it hangs over the project but in a light way, as if ignoring it is the only thing to do.

The humour comes from many places in the film, but first and foremost is Kline whose comic timing in an uproariously silly phone scene, brings him almost in a class that could be compared to Cary Grant, and Woody Harrelson, who has a deadpan style that shines in every scene he's in.

All in all, A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION is Altman's loving look at a slice of Americana, and brings me back to his other work, and this can be held up among them with no shame.

A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION: B