It's a warm and dignified end to a sometimes erratic but often enthralling career.

| Jan 9, 2007

It's a lovely and loving film.

| Jan 6, 2007

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.

| Jan 6, 2007

Just lovely, and a magnificently enjoyable coda to an extraordinary career.

| Jan 4, 2007

A celebration of show business at its purest and most joyful.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 8, 2006

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.

| Jun 14, 2006

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

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 14, 2006

Such is Altman's gift with actors that he even makes Lindsay Lohan seem fresh-faced, building the film to a climax in which the pop tartlet makes the most of her thin voice.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 12, 2006

Either you like that brand of music and humor or you don't. I am not a huge fan.

Full Review | Jun 12, 2006

Keillor may be the only one in history to keep happy both the sentimentalists who love Kinkade and the cynics who love po-mo happy, each thinking they're the only ones who really get him.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jun 9, 2006

Altman and Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion is fittingly both a celebration and a winning example of the joys of collaboration.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 9, 2006

Pass the Powdermilk Biscuits, slice the pie and serve the corn.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 9, 2006

It's a tribute to music's power to heal us, to the way a familiar tune brings a comfortable old-shoe smile and the way a group sing-along bonds those within it, creating a community in that moment.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 9, 2006

This is not one of the good Altmans. This isn't even one of the mediocre Altmans. No, the cinema's girl with the curl is back, and this time he's very, very bad.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jun 9, 2006

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 9, 2006

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

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 9, 2006

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 9, 2006

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

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 9, 2006

A Prairie Home Companion is a meditation on death that has you humming to the melody and laughing at the joke -- it's an elegiac picture that refuses to eulogize.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 9, 2006

Streep's work aside, you can pretty much get all that's worth having out of the film by skipping it entirely and buying the soundtrack album.

| Jun 9, 2006