View topic - Mother & Lover

Taken from Daily Yomiuri On-Line website :

Wm. Penn's reviews on "Last Christmas", "Kurokawa no Techo", and "Mother & Lover".

For the love of tough ladies and mama

Wm. Penn / Special to The Daily Yomiuri

Last Christmas (Mondays, 9 p.m., Fuji network) is not likely to hold my attention until this Christmas. Yuji Oda is excellent, as always, but there is something about the script, his costar Akiko Yada and the supporting cast that just doesn't click.

The story begins on Christmas 2004 with Haruki (Oda) in Yellowknife, Canada, trekking out alone to watch the aurora with a present in his pocket. (Haruki is an office worker and a nice guy still not married at 36, whose last fiancee left him when she found out his mother was in a long-term care facility.)

Then the plot suddenly jumps back a few months and we find Yuki (Yada) moving into the apartment next to his in the company housing complex. There just happens to be a door between their two rooms and it allows them to peak into each other's private lives.

While Yuki is dating his friend (and boss), Haruki can see he is just one of a long line of eager suitors. Her complicated past also includes membership in a "ladies" motorcycle gang and she still throws a pretty powerful punch.

Yuki is one of the "akujo" (nasty lady) heroines who are all over the small screen this season. She is tough but no competition for Ryoko Yonekura whose role in Kurokawa no Techo (Thursdays, 9 p.m., TV Asahi) requires her to be a bank robber, hostess bar mama, extortionist and all-around dangerous lady. Poor Ryoko, this series was much worse than expected and is not likely to draw any viewers away from Wataru Seken wa Oni Bakari (Thursdays, 9 p.m., TBS network).

But back to Last Christmas. Haruki discovers Yuki does have a soft side. When a drunken Yuki kicks a video through the door, he can't resist playing it. Several years old, it reveals she is divorced and shows her talking to herself the night before entering a hospital to face a life-threatening illness.

Now flash to another 2004 scene where we see her back at the hospital. Her doctor is holding a wrapped package similar to the one Haruki sported in the first scene. On her instructions, it is to be delivered to someone later on.

Is she still sick? Is she Haruki's soul mate? Is it worth sticking around to find out? Can't answer any of those questions yet. Viewers will definitely get an aurora at the end but so far no stars except the always able Oda.

With the dearth of competition, the Fuji network's Mother & Lover (Tuesdays, 10 p.m.) could end up being one of the season's better romantic comedies.

The sensitive Shingo (Kenji Sakaguchi) is a very macho mama's boy, and his mother (Keiko Matsuzaka), while filled with nostalgia for the past, is not particularly controlling.

Shingo, who studies acting, supports himself by pulling tourists around town in a rickshaw. This is how he has met 30-year-old Hitomi (Ryoko Shinohara). Viewers are supposed to believe he can trot about all day without collapsing from exhaust fumes or being run down by a taxi or a two-ton truck.

Fate has somehow thrown passenger and puller together and her heart goes all atwitter just looking at him. But it is not long before she learns why he has been left behind on the boyfriend market shelf.

Episode 1 ended with the clueless Shingo protesting: What's wrong with loving one's mother? She is about to tell him, but then her heart goes all aflutter again. In Episode 2, they discovered Hitomi and Mom share the same birthday.

Not outstanding but in its own quiet way, Mother & Lover is far more satisfying than Last Christmas. Two stars.