I never got the Lake Woebegon thing. Never did more than skim any of Keillor’s writings and wasn’t into the radio show. It was corny and I didn’t find the tongue in cheek fun poking at Midwesterners amusing. Still don’t. There is nothing magical about the coasts. CrazyBrother lives on the west one after all and if any of the bad actors in his life are to be taken for the average – well, culturally ignorant and tragically unhip people are everywhere. The Midwest isn’t cornering any markets.

But we were watching The World’s Fastest Indian (starts slow but improves) and as is our wont, scanned the previews for future viewing opportunities and stumbled on a few picks that our library had in stock (our library by the way is the most awesome source of flicks).

Garrison Keillor wrote and plays himself in a fictionalized version of his own show. Robert Altman directed it and I remember the tabloids at the time made much of the fact that Linsday Lohan was playing a character in an attempt to redeem herself as a serious actor (failed).

The story is shot in typical Altman fashion with random and overlapping dialogue/actions. If you’ve seen one of his other movies, you seen the template. Mostly it works but the characters and the setting have to be compelling and this story is so not. It’s dull. Duller, as one of Shakespeare’s characters once remarked, than a great thaw.

Rob fell asleep. This is an indictment of bad. My Virgo husband will stick with the worst movies until the bitterest of ends (Babel) because he hates to start something and not finish. 

I quit about an hour in with 46 mind-numbing minutes to go that Rob votes for skipping them.

The story – as nearly as I could follow – was about the radio shows last performance as the theater had been purchased by Texans (a memorable Kevin Kline line “Sure they talk funny and their eyes don’t focus and their flesh in rotting and falling off..”) who want to tear it down and put up a parking lot – Paradise Paved – I guess.

Lilly Tomlin and Meryl Streep are a Christian singing act with Lohan playing Streep’s suicide poet daughter. Streep’s character is a widow who is still in love with her husband’s friend played by Keillor. I really can’t tell you how cliche that is. Widow and best friend trysting and widow pining away in bitterness after he comes to his senses – or something like that. Anyway, totally couldn’t see why anyone would pine for Garrison Keillor. He is a bit bug-eyed and has no butt. Maybe it’s a sexy radio voice thing? If you close you eyes?

Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly do their best to save things as a cowboy singing duo but they are only good on their own. The minute another cast member begins sucking air in the scene, the whole aura deflates and everyone suffocates. Although there is one scene where the two old men are obviously vying for Lohan that isn’t too bad.

Virginia Madsen portrays an angel in a white trench coat that only Kevin Kline’s character can really see. At one point she guides the soul of an old man who sings on the show to the wherever. I cringed a bit when her character tells the old man’s paramour that “The death of an old man isn’t a tragedy” in her attempt to soothe the woman. While this is true. My early widow indoctrination programming reminds me to be a trifle indignant.

I believe the movie garnered the obligatory critical praise but it is truly an awful waste of talent as the number of Oscar winners and nominees totals half the main cast at least.

Here is my bottom line. Watch the trailer. All the good stuff is there. And then just listen to the actual radio show