A Prairie Home Companion

For anyone halfway awake to the nostalgia of a slow train's gonna come, Garrison Keillor's writing (Lake Wobegon Days) and the timbre of his voice are as golden as sunset through the pines. The man represents hard workin', clean livin', fair minded, honest to God, fifth generation Scandinavian-Americans - what musos call country and others call outtatime.

A Prairie Home Companion is a live radio show that he has hosted since the Seventies at a theatre in St Paul, Minnesota, and now, as a tribute to small town, hand-crafted entertainment, comes a movie of the same name, scripted by Keillor, that has the feel and style of Nashville Lite, because this is Robert Altman's last movie after 50 years in the director's chair.

The spectre of the grim reaper hangs over it, but in a respectful way. There is a blonde in a white trench coat (Virginia Madsen), who drifts about the theatre, mysteriously visible to some, but not to others. She is an angel - the angel of death? - who died a few years back, driving home, listening to Keillor's show on the radio, when she laughed so hard at one of his jokes the car left the road and hit a tree.

If this is Altman's finale, it is also A Prairie Home Companion's closing show and the theatre's last hurrah, as it has been bought by a developer (Tommy Lee Jones), who plans on tearing it down and building a supermarket. The sense of passing evokes sentiments that run deep and this is Keillor's milieu, the old times with their simple virtues of community and compassion.

As you would expect from the director of M.A.S.H and Gosford Park, Companion is a backstage/frontstage ensemble piece, rich in character, poor on plot. If Meryl Streep, as one half (Lily Tomlin is the other) of The Johnson Girls - "We're like the Carter family, only less famous" - tends to dominate, it is entirely due to strength of personality and a life-affirming performance. Woody Harrelson and John C Reilly, as Dusty and Lefty, the singin' cowpokes jes off the range, are excellent value, as is Kevin Kline, who demonstrates classy comedic skills as Guy Noir, the security man who thinks he's Philip Marlowe. Lindsay Lohan, as the youngest Johnson progeny, who writes suicidal poetry in the dressing room and wonders what she's doing there, breaks free finally for her big number, a personalised version of Frankie & Johnny.

It is a party, not a wake, beginning and ending at an Edward Hopper diner, but otherwise staying inside the theatre. It has the feel of improvisation, with moments of well-rehearsed business, usually involving Kline, who inhabits another movie altogether. The concept of the angel doesn't work, especially when she gives advice to the property developer, which doesn't change anything.

John Huston's last film was The Dead. This is not in the same class, perhaps because Keillor, in spite of his killer charm and languid delivery, is no match for James Joyce. However, it is what Altman did best and the actors are very aware that they have been invited to a farewell gig and so give it their all - for the old man, for his legacy and for the ghost of Saturday night.