A Prairie Home Companion

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about A Prairie Home Companion's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of A Prairie Home Companion completed by Young Media Australia (YMA) on 3 October 2006.

Age recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) and the associated consumer advice lines.

YMA review

This review of the movie A Prairie Home Companion contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• themes
• use of violence
• material that may scare or disturb children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

The film depicts the fictionalised final broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion , an actual live radio programme in the US . It takes us backstage to get a behind the scenes look at the cast who comprise the show. Over the course of the evening we are introduced to the Johnson sisters Yolanda (Meryl Streep) and Rhonda (Lily Tomlin) and Yolanda's daughter Lola (Lindsay Lohan) who over the course of the evening finally begins to see some value in the show.

We meet Dusty (Woody Harrelson) and Leftie (John C. Reilly) a pair of quarrelsome, yet friendly, cowboys whose crude humour is not only legendary but is also the bane of the stage manager's existence as he strives to conduct the show in a conscientious Christian manner.

We see the frustration of the heavily pregnant, production manager Molly (Maya Rudolph) who tries desperately to keep the show's extremely relaxed host (Garrison Keillor) on track, despite the high emotions (or lack thereof) surfacing over the course of the evening.

Themes

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Death

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie including:

• Lola writes a poem about suicide and explicitly talks about overdose and connecting a hose to a tailpipe
• reference to a Rottweiler biting an orang-utan's bottom.
• the Angel of death explains how she was killed in a car accident.
• the Axeman is killed in a car crash on his way to the airport (crash not shown).

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under eight

Children under eight are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations, the death of a parent or child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

It is unlikely that anything in this movie would scare or disturb children under the age of eight.

Over the age of eight

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Some older children and young adolescents, could be concerned by the discussions of death and suicide listed above.

Product placement

None of concern

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

• Dusty sings a song with some lyrics about licking a woman.
• Guy describes a tight T-shirt that the Angel of Death was wearing. He says that Mt. Rushmore never looked better and that both Jefferson and Lincoln looked very bloated and happy. He also mentions that her skirt was so tight you could read the embroidery on her underwear.
• “I'll give you my moonshine if you show me your jugs” (referring to breasts).
• Dusty makes a comment about riding bareback, which the stage manager and many of the radio listeners interpret in a sexual way.
• Dusty says that God created women with “three boobs”. When one turns out to be useless He uses it to create the male's penis.
• a beautiful young waitress is said to have offered a Grandfather sex, but the Grandfather says “I'll take the soup”.
• a bull is reputed to mate over 200 times a year. A wife tells her husband to watch the bull so he can learn how. The man replies that it is one hell of a bull, but that he doesn't always mate with the same cow.
• there is a joke about Viagra and hardened criminals
• a man believes that his wife has died because although the sex is the same, the dishes are stacking up
• Dusty makes a joke about what an elephant says to a naked man: “It's cute but can you breathe through that thing?”

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

• Yolanda tries to get the host to notice her as she is dressing for the show and repeatedly flashes her bra, adjusts her top and poses to show as much cleavage as possible
• Guy lifts up Molly's top to expose her belly to a few of the performers, and to criticise her for becoming another unmarried mother
• a performer and Evelyn, the sandwich lady, are kissing passionately in the corridor. After his performance the guy goes to his dressing room to light candles, to play romantic music, organise massage oil and strip down to his boxers to await Evelyn. He dies before she arrives and people comment how he “was loaded for Evelyn”.
• Dusty tells Leftie that “people can see your butt crack.”

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

• Guy and Molly down glasses of champagne.
• there is an advertisement for beer and it is also referred to a number of times in song.
• various characters smoke cigarettes. Guy attempts to roll his own.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

• hell
• damn
• bitches
• holy shit
• bastard.

There is also quite a bit of name calling with Dusty and Leftie referring to each other in terms such as moron, dumb and idiot.

The movie's message

A Prairie Home Companion has an extremely unusual style, as it often seems that you are just watching a series of unrelated conversations as opposed to a plot. Consequently younger viewers would be confused and probably unable to follow along. The film will likely appeal only to a very select audience including avid listeners of the radio show and fans of Garrison Keillor.

The main messages from this movie are that all good things must come to an end and that, despite advancements in technology there is still great value in doing things the old-fashioned way.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

• patience
• determination
• teamwork
• loyalty.

Some parents may wish to discuss Lola's obsession with suicide, what it could mean and its possible ramifications.