There was nothing to translate.

Rating: 1/10 (23 January 2012)

Again, critics convince people that a bad movie is art. I like slow movies and can handle little to no dialogue but this one has little meaning and I had no emotional connection to the story or the characters. I spent most of the movie thinking, I'm missing something. I was convinced I didn't get it, there's something deeper going on. Then I started reading the reviewers who liked it in hopes to understand what I had missed and realized, I hadn't missed anything at all.
The story is about a young recently married Yale graduate, Charlotte(Scarlett Johansson), whose husband is a successful photographer, John (Ribisi). Her husband's job has taken them to Tokyo. She is bored and alienated and spends most her time staring out her expensive hotel window. Charlotte is unsure of her future and life choices. You feel her and her husband have little connection to the point of why did they even get married in the first place? John seems to connect more with an American actress. They connect over superficial conversation but our heroine is quiet and introspective and therefore "deep." This makes Charlotte more worthy - can you hear the sarcasm. The petty conversation of her husband and the actress bore her because she was a philosophy major, you know. However, Charlotte, this deep and educated woman, can't seem to find anything interesting to do in a lush and vibrant city.
Bob (Bill Murray) is an aging actor(?) in a mid-life crisis and has a stale marriage. He is in Tokyo to make some TV commercials. He feels as alone and alienated as Charlotte. They meet and since Charlotte is not much for talking and neither is Bob, especially not about superficial stuff of course, they have an immediate connection. They spend the next few days hanging out and enjoying the night life. Two bored miserable people of a certain amount of privilege seeking more meaningful lives find each other by going bar-hopping and smoking weed. Not much happens and these deep people who have the power to see the world more truthfully and identify the pointless crap basically mock the Japanese. I won't say it was racist but the feeling like a foreigner in a strange land was only partially realized. All new lands have strange cultures, sure, but combined with all the Japanese people presented as inane, smiling, and eager bordered on offensive.
I found the characters evoked little sympathy. They were as bland as the story, or non-story, that was told. The movie is boring and slow to the point of unbearable. I don't know what people liked? I'm guessing Hollywood enjoyed a movie that made a relationship with a 30 year age gap somewhat believable and told us it was not out of shallowness but a "deep" connection. Perhaps having Coppola as your last name doesn't hurt when people are voting for the Oscars.