Film Review: Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes

Title:              Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes
Director:              Peter Rosen
Producer:            Susan Lacy, Sally Jo Fifer (Exec), Peter Rosen
Screenwriter:     Sara Lukinson
Cinema:                Joel Shapiro
Editor:                   Bob Jorrisen
Music:                   Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band
Sound:                   Roger Phenix
Year:                      2008 (84 minutes)

Synopsis: Arguably America’s foremost humorist and commentator, Garrison Keillor, takes his skits and jokes, music and monologues across the country in his traveling radio show, spinning his stories into American gold. This free form, intimate look at the private man in the public spotlight goes behind the scenes of America’s most popular radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, and inside the imagination of the man who created it. Compared to James Thurber, Will Rogers, and Mark Twain, Garrison Keillor is a weekly tradition for millions of Americans in that most old-fashioned of mediums – radio. Where TV shows see their ratings dipping, Keillor’s radio ratings remain among the highest for any program of its type in the nation – some 30+ years on. Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes gives us insight into how all of that happened.

Review: I was really looking forward to seeing this film. I enjoy Garrison Keillor’s writing and am a fan of A Prairie Home Companion radio show. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.

Although the film bills itself as an “intimate look at the private man in the public spotlight,” there really isn’t much that’s intimate about the film. Not much about Keillor is revealed. The film also promises to go “behind the scenes of America’s most popular radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, and inside the imagination of the man who created it.” The film does have some behind the scenes footage of the radio show, but it fails to deliver on its promise to go inside the imagination of Garrison Keillor. If it had been truthful, the film promotion should have said, “We’ll follow Garrison Keillor as he walks around at the Minnesota State Fair.” Not very exciting, but more accurate.

Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes is a 60 minute PBS cookie cutter documentary disguised as an 84 minute feature length film. It fails to live up to its promise of revealing one of the Country’s most creative and humorous writers and performers.

(2.5 out of 5.0)