‘Companion’ a dull, flat experience

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In theaters

“A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION,” directed by Robert Altman, written by Garrison Keillor, 105 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new Robert Altman movie, “A Prairie Home Companion,” is set within the closed world of radio performed via the stage, with the audience in attendance at St. Paul’s F. Scott Fitzgerald Theater watching what will be the last performance of a long-running radio show. Given the ripe possibilities for real theater to explode at such an event, the movie sounds as if might offer the juice of, say, Altman’s “Gosford Park.”

It doesn’t.

“Companion” is as wide open and as gentle as its title suggests. Sometimes you appreciate it for Altman’s typical breezy looseness and disregard for structure. Other times you wish a snake would cut across this “Prairie” and bite somebody on the ankle, if only to liven up a movie seriously in need of dramatic tension.

The film, which screenwriter Garrison Keillor based on his popular public radio program, is little more than a sweetly nostalgic, mildly entertaining diversion. It’s best reserved for fans of the radio show, or for its release on DVD.

Its virtue is its cast, which includes the great Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin as singing sisters Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson, as well as John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson as two singing cowboys, Lefty and Dusty. Backed by Keillor, who plays a mirror image of himself as GK, these five leave the strongest impression in a movie otherwise filled with blank slates.

The thin plot is an afterthought. The theater has been purchased by an out-of-town businessman named the Axeman (Tommy Lee Jones), who comes to put the kibosh on the theater and an era. Running security at the joint is Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), who is the only person to have any interaction with the Axeman, not that there’s much of it since each actor is squandered here.

Faring no better is an expressionless Virginia Madsen as a ghostly angel of death, who roams the theater’s halls cinched into a white trench coat. More Stepford robot than heavenly creation, Madsen’s weirdly disconnected performance is the movie’s biggest letdown. By the end of the film, you wish she would just lose the wooden act, unbutton the coat and flash somebody, if only to shake thing up.

As Streep’s disgruntled daughter, Lola, who writes punchy poems about suicide, Lindsay Lohan slumps in chairs and generally looks unhappy until she’s given the chance to sing onstage, where still she struggles to come to life. Maya Rudolph of “Saturday Night Live,” however, is nicely cast as a pregnant, gum-snapping producer.

Streep, Tomlin and Keillor are the reasons to see the movie – they have their bag of tricks and they dip into them liberally to keep things interesting, at least when they’re onscreen. As for rest of the cast, they are lost within the presumably lost time the movie evokes.

Grade: C

On video and DVD

“THE LIBERTINE,” directed by Laurence Dunmore, written by Stephen Jeffreys, 114 minutes, rated R.

Laurence Dunmore’s “The Libertine” begins with Johnny Depp in close-up, his hooded eyes burning through the candlelit gloom. “Allow me to be frank at the commencement,” he says. “You will not like me. You will not like me now, and you will like me a good deal less as we go on. I am John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, and I do not want you to like me.”

And so we don’t.

Not that it’s especially difficult. As written by Stephen Jeffreys from his own play, “The Libertine” confirms what history knows – Wilmot was one grotesque, unlikable sod. In what arguably is the most disagreeable role of Depp’s career, the actor, one of our best, seems to be having a grand time playing the well-known writer-cum-sexaholic who couldn’t give a toss for anyone, himself included. Yet Depp’s enjoyment isn’t transcendent. The movie is a grimy, uninvolving mess, with too much of the writing proving just as sloppy as the muddy sets and the unwashed cast.

The film saddles Depp’s 17th-century satirist with the sort of dialogue that could pull the glue out of a horse: “I wish you to shag with my homuncular image rattling in your gonads,” he says to the camera, which somehow remains steady. “I want you to feel how it was for me – how it is for me – and ponder, ‘Was that shudder the same shudder he sensed? Did he know something more profound?'” Doubtful.

The movie is concerned with a few things – the betrayal of the writer, for one, the peculiar times for another – but nothing more so than sex. It takes place, after all, during the Restoration, when bared breasts, loose talk, public fondling and orgies were apparently the order of the day. So was syphilis, which Wilmot contracted, but that’s for later.

The film’s hook is King Charles II (John Malkovich), who has charged the gifted Wilmot to write the sort of piece that will champion his reign, as Shakespeare did for Queen Elizabeth. What Charles gets instead is a damaging satire, which ignites in him a rage that should have set the movie ablaze, but doesn’t. It falls flat.

Meanwhile, Wilmot is busy ignoring his pitiful wife, Elizabeth (Rosamund Pike), for the actress, Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton), with whom he falls in love before he gradually starts to waste away. Doubled over in pain, his nose rotting off his face, Wilmot keeps chugging along in an effort to anger and isolate everyone until he’s nothing but an unrecognizable skeleton with a sketchy heartbeat.

For an actor like Depp who enjoys taking risks, the lure of such a role must have been intoxicating. The problem with the movie isn’t him; he’s having fun. Instead, it’s the film’s failed execution that sinks it. Dunmore tries to generate energy around the ongoing theatrics, but they consistently feel canned, silly, predictable.

Grade: D

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, and Weekends in Television. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.

THE VIDEO/DVD CORNER

Renting a video or a DVD? BDN film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

Big Momma’s House 2 – D

Breakfast on Pluto – B

Capote – A

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 –

C-

The Constant Gardener –

A-

The Chronicles of Narnia:

The Lion, The Witch and

the Wardrobe – A

Date Movie – D-

Derailed – C+

Eight Below – B+

Failure to Launch – C-

The Family Stone – D

Freedomland – C-

Fun with Dick and Jane –

C

Good Night, and Good

Luck – A-

The Hills Have Eyes – D

A History of Violence – A

Hitch: Blu-Ray – B

Hoodwinked – C

Howl’s Moving Castle – A-

Jarhead – B

Junebug – A

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – B+

Last Holiday – B

The Last Samurai: Blu-

Ray – C

The Libertine – D

The Matador – B+

Match Point – A

Memoirs of a Geisha – C+

Munich – A-

Nanny McPhee – B-

North Country – C

Oliver Twist – B+

Paradise Now – A-

The Pink Panther – C+

Pitch Black: Blu-Ray –

B+

Pride & Prejudice – A

Prime – B-

The Producers – B+

Red Eye – B+

Rent – C-

Rumor Has It… – C-

Shopgirl – B+

16 Blocks – B

The Squid and the Whale

– B+

Syriana – B+

Transamerica – B

The Chronicles of Narnia:

The Lion, The Witch and

The Wardrobe – A

Underworld: Evolution –

C-

An Unfinished Life – C-

Walk the Line – A-

Wallace & Gromit: The

Curse of the Were-Rabbit

– A