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Declared by the Los Angeles Times, a "classic screwball farce with high energy and wonderful comic timing," Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald is an exuberant and constantly surprising backstage farce that lovingly sends up Japanese society, American blockbuster mentality, and show business in general.
As the cast of a Japanese radio melodrama's pre-show jitters boil over in the last fleeting moments before airtime, "Woman of Destiny's" temperamental star Nokko (Keiko Toda) demands certain "small" changes to housewife turned writer Miyako's (Kyoko Suzuki) soapy script. To Miyako's increasing horror, Nokko and her not-to-be-undone egotistical co-stars' increasingly arbitrary demands transform Miyako's autobiographical fishing village romance into an ersatz American gangster drama cum disaster epic. The ensuing live broadcast becomes an outrageously escalating screwball free-for-all where everyone from the show's unctuous producer to the network's parking lot security guard weigh in with confrontations, solutions, demands, and improvisations to keep their increasingly surreal and senseless runaway train of a story from jumping the tracks entirely.
Working from his own script, first-time director Koki Mitani expertly knits together a crazy quilt of comic flourishes and character cliff-hangers. Upping the absurdist ante at every audacious turn, Mitani's prowling camera meticulously probes his ensemble's comically fragile psyches and frustrated desires while literally setting the stage for a triumphant show-stopper ending that would make Busby Berkeley proud.
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"Hilarious! Delirious...pure, giddy fun!" - Stephen Holden, The New York Times
"A joyous throwback to the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s!" - Jami Bernard, The New York Daily News
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