Its title and its emcee have been taken from Garrison (a/k/a Garrulous) Keillor's weekly public-radio show. But there is no mention of the imaginary world of Lake Woebegone, MN. The sole setting is the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, named after native son F. Scott, and ticketed for the wrecking ball; and the plot situation is closing night of a long-running old-fashioned live radio variety hour, mixing gospel music, cowboy songs, bluegrass, and blues: a fragile audio fantasy made heavily (and unconvincingly) concrete. Director Robert Altman brings, along with his drifting, disengaged cameras, a deep-seated condescension that makes the loss seem like no big loss. And it goes without saying that he also brings an ensemble cast: Kevin Kline as a Clouseau-esque private eye unfortunately named Guy Noir and unfortunately narrating in first person, Virginia Madsen as a heaven-sent angel in a white trenchcoat, Tommy Lee Jones as the heartless new landlord, and a host of nonsingers as singers, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson, L.Q. Jones, and the regrettably irrepressible Keillor himself. Lindsay Lohan, purportedly a professional singer, sounds the worst of the lot. (Streep, a passable warbler, always gives more than required or requested, and she alone thought to give a Minnesota accent.) Inevitably there are nice touches, like the new landlord's sour glance at the bust of Fitzgerald during Reilly's and Harrelson's "Bad Jokes" number ("Why do they call it PMS? Because mad cow was already taken"), but Altman treats everything, good, bad, mostly indifferent, as a throwaway. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd