Schoolgirls become friends and run together in a track and field club. It's easy-to-watch, nice and relaxing.

It's an idol vehicle, unfortunately. The core cast are all members of Morning Musume (founded 1997 and still going today, with an ever-fluctuating membership and a total head count to date of 47 members). Eleven of them are in this film. Hurm. I don't know if I'd have watched this if I'd known about that... but I quite enjoyed it. The girls are likeable. The acting's not perfect, but it's good enough.

This isn't a heavyweight film, but it has some meaningful content. Three girls get close to death, each in a different way. One girl is getting beaten by her overly controlling father, who looks like both H.P. Lovecraft and Rondo Hatton. The film and its characters both see him more generously than I did, possibly due to a Japanese authority bias. Yeah, he's a human being too. Yeah, trying to see things from the other person's point of view is almost always the best route to a lasting solution. Personally, though, I'd have called it a happy ending if he'd had his legs broken by getting pushed down a lift shaft. Another girl is alarmingly immature when it comes to her childhood friend and crush, although she'll grow. A third girl has a problematic relationship with her deaf, divorced mother.

You'll be wondering if (a) that boyfriend is ridiculously tall, or (b) Mari Yaguchi is a munchkin. Answer: both. Yaguchi is only 1.45 metres tall, i.e. four foot seven. I also wondered if the girls were running their relay race with no baton, but their "baton" is a sash. They just wear it. That's a good idea, actually.

There's a teacher so annoying that she almost breaks the film. The only possible actress for this role was Rosalind Knight. When a boy saves a girl from burning to death, she thinks this is appalling because he's MALE!!!! She wants to build concrete walls around the school. Literally. That's not a figure of speech. Whoever invented that character should leave the movie industry.

This is a pleasant ensemble film, but it has better, spikier characterisation than you might expect from an idol vehicle. Yaguchi's character starts out as an abrasive brat, for instance, doing inadvisable things on the back of her friend's bicycle. (Stealing a banana from a fruit stall, or wrenching the rider's head sideways so he can't see where he's going.) Another girl is anti-empathy and gets booted from the basketball club. This isn't a particularly memorable film, but it's quite nicely done and I enjoyed it.