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Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes
Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Even if you're not a regular listener of Keillor's show A Prairie Home Companion weaves a spell on you. It's a charmer. Read more
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Altman's sidewinding tribute to a surprisingly hardy 32-year-old public radio phenomenon is like a 105-minute putter in the garden, with a few songs and some jokes. It's nice. Read more
David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: 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. Read more
Rex Reed, New York Observer: A Prairie Home Companion is about as charming as waking up with a dead animal in your bed. Read more
Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: 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. Read more
Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: Either you like that brand of music and humor or you don't. I am not a huge fan. Read more
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: A Prairie Home Companion is as heartwarming as a plate of Powdermilk Biscuits, as unexpected as a slice of rhubarb pie and as wistful as a chorus of Red River Valley. Read more
Nathan Rabin, AV Club: Altman and Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion is fittingly both a celebration and a winning example of the joys of collaboration. Read more
Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: Fans should enjoy A Prairie Home Companion, a movie based on Keillor's satirical radio show, known for its dry Midwestern wit and fake ads for biscuits and duct tape. Read more
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Altman and Garrison Keillor have turned Keillor's beloved radio show into the sort of backstage entertainment allegory that brings out the best in the director. Read more
Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: Without Keillor's monologue and the show's collective inclusion on the joke, the movie falls into a strange nostalgia for something that hardly anyone remembers, if it ever really existed at all. Read more
J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Good-humored and enormously entertaining but also sentimental and a little dishonest. Read more
Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle: Nondevotees also should find a home in this agreeable, accessible Companion. Read more
Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Although contemporary, the film has the deliberately antique flavor of old-time radio -- the world that existed before television. Read more
Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: If A Prairie Home Companion is director Robert Altman's swan song, it's a tune with plenty of sweet, rootsy grace notes. Read more
Tom Long, Detroit News: Those who have the sense to seek out this film will find themselves delightfully transported as Altman and screenwriter-star Garrison Keillor tackle issues of time, mortality and family while offering up great dollops of homespun entertainment. Read more
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: What sustains the film is the performers' belief in their shaggy-dog selves, which is more than just talent -- it's faith. Read more
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: The movie is not just enormously entertaining, it is deeply moving, both in the way it celebrates storytelling and storytellers -- and in the unembarrassed way its creators and performers remind us how much we need them. Read more
Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Even with its feisty, anti-corporate sympathies, this movie adaptation of Garrison Keillor's beloved Midwestern radio drollery is a breezy affair. Read more
Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: For a film about death and endings, A Prairie Home Companion is a cracking good time -- a warm, golden bauble within which to shelter, like the radio show that inspired it, from the misery and ennui that engulf us in and out of the multiplex. Read more
John Anderson, Newsday: Robert Altman adapts the radio to the screen, or the screen to the radio, in this affectionate, mortality-fixated salute to old-timey music, values and the timeless allure of Powdermilk biscuits. Read more
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: For the rest of us, this is a woebegone world we not only don't know but don't particularly want to visit. Read more
Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: 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. Read more
Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: 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. Read more
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The movie brings us an old-fashioned radio variety show, in all its glory, and an old-fashioned Robert Altman movie, all ensemble-and-improvisation. Read more
James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Despite a folksy, low-key appeal, this movie is likely to primarily interest fans of Garrison Keillor's popular radio program. Read more
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: What a lovely film this is, so gentle and whimsical, so simple and profound. Read more
Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Whatever A Prairie Home Companion has to say about aging, about death, about the mutability of art, is never stated outright: And yet it's all there in the picture's rambunctious collage of moods. Read more
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: 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. Read more
Michael Agger, Slate: By the movie's own reckoning, it's a success: a dented, mysterious item that you would find buried in a secondhand store -- a relic of the old, weird America that Keillor so loves. Read more
Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: 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. Read more
Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Pass the Powdermilk Biscuits, slice the pie and serve the corn. Read more
Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: 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. Read more
Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Just lovely, and a magnificently enjoyable coda to an extraordinary career. Read more
Claudia Puig, USA Today: At its best, it's a gentle meditation on mortality. But at weaker moments it feels meandering and strangely empty. Read more
Rob Nelson, Village Voice: Keillor's modest subservience to Altman's group dynamic feels downright gallant, and in the context of the veteran director's most humanistic movie by a wide margin, it certainly has its rewards. Read more
Desson Thomson, Washington Post: A Prairie Home Companion tries to embrace the spirit of that longtime radio series but suffocates the very qualities that make the original show so special in the first place. Read more