Overrated

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2005)

I didn't expect much and I wasn't surprised by what I saw in this vastly overrated film. The story is sweet enough and human enough to win anyone's attention. Meandering through the script like a half-baked zombie in a morgue which was probably his intention, Bill Murray does a fine job in underacting and evoking his alienated movie-star tourist persona. Scarlett Johansson also shares Murray's alienation but channels it in a subtler manner. The best aspect of the film is its visual beauty. The lensing is similar to Christopher Doyle's atmospheric work in Chungking Express, but here the austerity and anoynymous spaces that the characters inhabit match the abstract sense of detached reality Coppola evokes so effectively.