Best of Denver

Writer/director Koti Mitani's Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald was the most unexpected sort of Japanese film imaginable: Inspired by classic Hollywood comedies like those of Preston Sturges, Mitani's madcap farce is set initially in a Tokyo radio station, where a housewife's prize-winning melodrama is about to be performed on the air. But when the leading lady suddenly insists on changing the name of her character, she sets into motion a series of improvisations, minor catastrophes and major disasters that turn the original script into an unrecognizable action-adventure.