Following her international breakthrough in 2017 with “Tremble All You Want,” Akiko Ohku became known for quirky comedies about a single woman’s search for love. And she had a populist touch: “Tremble All You Want,” which starred Mayu Matsuoka as a nerdy office worker obsessed with her junior high school crush, and the 2020 rom-com “Hold Me Back,” which features Rena Nonen (better known as Non) as an office clerk who gets romantic advice from a voice in her head, both won audience awards at the Tokyo International Film Festival.
Ohku’s new film, the perky nuptial disaster comedy “Wedding High” — scripted by comic Hidetomo Masuno, aka Bakarhythm — represents a change in direction if not her aim to entertain: Unlike the above-mentioned films, it is an ensemble piece, with the ostensible star, TV drama veteran Ryoko Shinohara, not taking center stage until nearly 40 minutes in.
Shinohara plays Maho Nakagoshi, a spark plug of a wedding planner who loves her job. Both she and her staff are dedicated to giving newlyweds the ideal wedding, even when their clients are driving them nuts with impossible demands. In this respect, “Wedding High” resembles the many Japanese movies in which a team unites to earnestly overcome obstacles, while delivering a collective shoutout to the organization men (and women) in the audience.