• ラジオの時間 (Welcome Back, Mr McDonald)

11/4/17 (Sat)

The prolific stage/film writer Mitani Koki has his good days [The Last Laugh (笑いの大学), Twelve Gentle Japanese (12人の優しい日本人)] and bad (most of his output), and this 1997 film, based on his 1993 stage show, is one of the latter. A radio station is preparing for a live broadcast of a romantic drama scripted by a novice writer. Much to her dismay, demands from the stars and the weakness of the frantic producer lead to an increasingly outrageous rewriting of the script, some of it dictated by on-air improvisations – the script’s meek daughter of a pachinko parlor operator becomes a powerful lawyer, the characters become foreigners, the rural Japanese setting becomes New York, a small boat becomes a rocket, the happy reunion of the lovers becomes a diva moment for the lead female, an unintended on-air comment by the writer’s husband forces the actors to pull him into the story, and so forth. The antics build to a fever pitch before coming together in an impossible conclusion engineered by the program’s director.

The promising material is undone by its excesses. The exaggerated characters did not feel like real people, and the story’s over-the-top developments were by no means organic. The show felt manipulated. Kotani directed his own material, which was probably not a good idea; he is not adept at getting the best out of his actors, who are largely over-actors. Another hand may have helped rein in some of the overkill. Masahiko Nishimura was not convincing in the least as the producer, giving an hysterical portrayal that may have worked better on the stage (where he originated the role). Suzuki Kyoka, Karasawa Toshiaki and Toda Keiko did what they could with their roles as the writer, director and lead actress. A young Watanabe Ken made a surprise appearance in a minor role as a truck driver, but his scenes were filmed oddly from the side and looked tacked on in another cheap attempt at a laugh. This show might be interesting to see on stage, but it’s eminently forgettable on film.