The emperor has no clothes

Rating: 3/10 (27 April 2004)

Long pauses and lingering shots do not actually instill meaning into emptiness. This film is nothing but a surfeit of pauses hoping to evoke something deep and resonant but in fact it's just vapid.

Bill Murray gives a decent performance but how are you supposed to empathise with a character who is oh-so terribly bored because he is stuck in Japan for one week - during which he is incidentally earning $2,000,000.

This movie is best viewed as a con aimed at the rich and famous about how terrible the problems of being rich and famous are and how empty their lives can be in spite of their near limitless options. All together now: "Get over it".
I was really hoping they might take the opportunity to say something, indeed anything, interesting about life but all you get is the most cursory and trite observations about a tiny handful of subjects. And gosh, don't Japanese people do the darnedest things? That's right. foreigners are funny, in spite of the fact that they are waiting on our lead characters hand and foot for the entire film making them feel welcome.
This movie is a charade that appeals to a certain, well-heeled section of society but I'm saying the emperor has no clothes.