Welcome Back Mr McDonald

Winner (and only entrant) in Radio Beng Teng's drama competition, a shy housewife is about to have her emotive drama about married romance turned into chaotic farce when the temperamental star decides she does not want the lead to be a pachinko-parlour flunky but a high-powered New York lawyer. Changes are duly made, but then the other cast members start complaining too, and soon the hassled station manager and studio director find themselves forced to fake burst dams and rocket flight in the studio. Having worked on stage and in radio, first time writer/director Mitani displays pure brilliance at keeping the mayhem on the right side of plausibility and never letting the performers run away with themselves. The textbook comic construction offers a master class in setting a gag up then topping it, since Mitani always has another winning notion in reserve. In pure entertainment terms, this is easily the equal of Tampopo and Shall We Dance?, yet it somehow failed to find the same international distribution.