Shotgun Marriage

The 90s are called the golden era of jdorama. I'm slowly starting to believe it, because this is still such an echo of gold... You knock up a girl, you don't want an abortion, so you take care of it. The three couples here work out their issues (with Abe Hiroshi as the buffoon, and he's good at it), but the last word still goes to the excellent Takenouchi and Hirosue, and what a sweet word it is. You have fun when you're supposed to, sad when you're supposed to. You don't cry, but who wants to cry all the time either? There’s plenty of crying from the pregnant girl (whose belly hardly gets any bigger, if you ask me). We make our way through a couple of clichés that are delivered naturally so they don't get in the way, and it doesn’t matter given the good dialogue and well-acted characters, and I must say that the filmmakers captured the psyche of the two leads quite well (and the others of course, it just felt very "Japanese"). I can't do anything but recommend it. Even the musical element was not out of place. A dorama over ten years old? No problem, they’re usually better than the horrors they make now. What I didn't like much were the expectant grandparents – Ryunosuke's mother is a hysterical busybody who doesn't know when to shut her mouth, Chiyo's mother was unappealing to me, and her father was a bit too uncompromising at times, but that suited his character, so he was the only parent I more or less accepted, not to mention his stalking... :-D (04/14/2011)