Perfect film for this genre

Rating: 10/10 (26 July 2019)

I think that many people don't understand that this is a "slice of life" type film. You're like a fly on the wall watching how people interact with each other and how they deal with various situations. There isn't supposed to be a cohesive plot any more that someone's actual life has a plot. The characters don't have goals which are blocked by an antagonist who they have to overcome by the end of the film. These are the kind of films you can play in the background and slowly get into. Gotta just take the genre for what it is.
Murray's character is an actor who has become jaded with the extras that come along with being famous. He seems to have done the whole product promotion thing a thousand times before and has become a victim of his own success. Scarlett's character is an intelligent young woman who recently graduated ivy league and got married before even knowing what she wants to do in life. Instead she follows her husband around on his ventures.
They're both trapped in the minutiae of their lives...
While Murray's character is big, he finds it difficult to relate to anybody. Everybody he meets immediately just starts talking about his movies and he takes it as part of the territory but is visibly sick of it, as if he never signed up for this. Scarlett, on the other hand, is small. It's her husband who is big and well known to the point where he's good friends with celebrities. She feels like an accessory to someone else's life rather than the primary focus of her own.
They meet by chance while staying at the same hotel in Tokyo. The film goes to great lengths to show just how different the Japanese culture from their perspective. How they don't understand what's going on half the time because of the language barrier and customs.
They end up being the perfect piece to the other one's puzzle. Due to her lifestyle, she's the only person there who isn't impressed by his celebrity. He's the only one there who she can have a deep, intellectual conversation with. This is highlighted by Scarlett's character being forced to listen to one of her husband's celebrity friend's played perfectly by Anna Farris, who is always bringing up asinine conversation topics in which she constantly gets facts wrong or just makes things up.
Murray and Scarlett start spending time together and you can tell that these are two people who would probably never find their way to interact with each other but for being in Japan. It shows that some connections are like this. They work in one context but not others. If they were back in the US their lives would be too different. However in this context, two strangers can find it easier to understand each other than even their spouses, with an even more powerful connection. There are implications to why people grow weary of their marriages. The context of a relationship may change over time especially after a couple has children.
A lot of the film is subtextual. There's one scene where they're in a restaurant and they're both in a bad mood. It doesn't make sense at first glance since they've been having such a great time together, but it can be deduced that they're upset at the fact that they've each met someone who gets them so well but they could never actually be together. There's a generational gap between them plus all the other barriers makes it unfeasible, and it's just not fair. They'll soon just have to return to their lives.
These real life type of themes are brought up but not overanalyzed. The audience has plenty of leeway come up with their own thoughts and interpretations of the themes. There are many funny moments and some stereotyping of Japan, but not to the point of being offensive. All the characters feel real and are intriguing to watch. It feels like the movie could start following the lives of any other characters and still be interesting. There's rapper that had like five lines and it even had me pondering what he was doing in Japan.
The film is fantastic in my opinion and near perfect for the genre. It's even better that it was filmed in the pre smart phone era Tokyo. An era where if you were by yourself, you were alone even if you had a mobile phone. Today, you're never alone as long as you have access to you messaging apps. Today, you can't really get lost with Google maps. Today, you can translate anything you need to communicate with someone else. This movie was released at the perfect time and another one like it could only exist as a period piece.