Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald

A brilliant comedy from Japan about a radio station going live with an original drama written by Miyako, a housewife, who entered a contest the station gave. She is played superbly by the plainly dressed but pretty Kyoko Suzuki. From the beginning, the madness starts. Her screenplay keeps getting tweaked to the point where it is unrecognizable and the last second script changes keep the tension up. Throughout, the characters are so rich: The temperamental actress Nokko (Keiko Toda), the too appeasing producer, the opinionated engineer, the suffering manager of Nokko, Miyako's husband who thinks the screenplay is about him, and so on. Its screwball comedy at its best, frantic, unrelenting and, at times, hilarious. I would not usually give a 10 to a movie such as this, but this one not only keeps your interest, it gets better and better. Even Ken Wattanabe is here, playing a trucker who, while driving his big rig, tunes into the melodrama and is moved by it all. Writer/Director Koki Mitani does a superb job of keeping the pacing perfect in this film. You have to see it, it is really terrific.