Review of Warai no Daigaku

Cast
Yakusho Koji and Inagaki Goro

Story
Set in Showa 15, that was the year when Japan embarked on its path towards World War 2.

In order to control the entertainment to its citizens, the Government sets up a censorship department to assess the stage drama scripts submitted so as to ensure that undesirable content is not shown to influence the citizens.

Sakisaka Mutsuo (Yakusho Koji) is a censorship officer who is always stern and never laughs. On the other hand, Tsubaki Hajime (Inagaki Goro) is a scriptwriter working in a stage group, Warai no Daigaku, whose job is to make people laugh.

Tsubaki submits a script which is a parody of Romeo and Juliet and Sakisaka is the officer in charge of approving this script. Sakisaka sees no meaning in showing comedy stage plays at this time when the country is at war. Thus, he makes things difficult for many of the scripwriters where some give up due to his unreasonable demands.

Tsubaki is different from the rest as he tries to amend the script in order to meet Sakisaka's never-ending demands. Although Sakisaka never meant to approve the script in the first place and could have rejected the script outright, he is slowly won over by Tsubaki's enthusiasm towards comedy in the 7 days they work together to amend the script. However, before Tsubaki has a chance to let this comedy reach the audiences, he receives a notification to be enlisted into the army...

Review
Looking at the cast, there's only 2 main characters played by Inagaki and Yakusho. And the set is mainly at the censorship office where there's only a table and 2 chairs. However, this being a comedy movie, offers much amusement which goes beyond the simple set and cast relationship.

Yakusho is an accomplished actor and shines as the stern Sakisaka who is slowly converted to accept comedy in those turbulent times. As for Inagaki, I think this is the role which I like most from him as he performs very well as Tsubaki who tries to convince Yakusho that comedy is good for the people. Since there's only the two of them throughout the whole movie, instead of being boring where's there a lack of different characters, the movie puts undivided attention on the development of these 2 people with vastly different stands which makes the focus of the movie consistent.

The humour is mainly based on the dialogue between the two of them and it's not a ridiculous form of cheap jokes. In addition, comedy brings the two characters together and gets them to appreciate each other's point of view. Sakisaka admires Tsubaki for his enthusiasm towards comedy and never gives up even though Sakisaka is deliberately making things difficult for him. On the other hand, although Tsubaki disagrees with the fact that comedy is a waste of time and is not required in these times, he also finds that Sakisaka might be a good comedy writer afterall. However, the ending of the story where Tsubaki cannot fulfil his wish of bringing the script created jointly by him and Sakisaka is quite sad and makes you regret that he doesn't have the chance to show this comedy to the world...