Sexual Tension Galore

Rating: 9/10 (10 March 2004)

The essence of this movie is sexual tension. This tension fills all of the long moments of silence, avoided eye-contact, and action frozen by uncertainty. What is lost in translation is not an understanding of Japanese, but the cultural wall that divides the generations of Americans.
Bill Murray's character and that of Scarlett Johannson cannot fully connect with each other because they know that wall between generations will go up again when they return home. They connect emotionally, but they live in two different worlds back in the States. Watching them struggle to break this cultural divide by jumping into teen Japanese culture is half the fun of the movie.
A sidelight in this film is the great cinematography around Tokyo.