Radio days; Robert Altman reveals the heartland- and a big heart-in A Prairie Home Companion.

Hollywood boasts countless famous names, but only a handful have inspired an adjective. If Robert Altman has a new film, you can be pretty sure it will feature an ensemble cast, overlapping dialogue, and a messy shambles of a plot. What you can't predict is whether it will be any good: His last film, The Company, all but dribbled onto the screen. But whenever you're ready to write Altman off, he startles you with a nifty pirouette. That's what happens with A Prairie Home Companion, which offers something unexpected from this notoriously irascible director: good-

hearted, almost nostalgic Middle American entertainment.

The wispy plot is set in St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater during the final broadcast of a radio program modeled on public radio's real-life A Prairie Home Companion. Essentially playing himself, Garrison Keillor stars as G.K., who emcees the live show while backstage fills up with his lead performers. These include the wisecracking cowboy duo of Dusty and Lefty (John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson) and the singing sisters Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), who reminisce and banter while Yolanda's daughter Lola (Lindsay Lohan) writes poems that groove on death. Meanwhile, the show's kooky security guard, Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), is handling two interlopers: a mysterious, trench-coated blonde (Virginia Madsen) who may be trouble and a Bible-mad Texan businessman (Tommy Lee Jones) who ...