A shallow, boring film by Sofia Coppola.

Rating: 1/10 (4 February 2004)

The story is about two people who meet at Japan by chance. A bored rich movie star, Bob Harris (Murray), who goes to Japan to do some commercial ads and a girl, Charlotte (Johansson), who is there with her busy young husband who is also there on work. Both of them are bored and tired of their relationships for no apparent reason. The husband is always at work, trying to make a living, and Murray's woman is at home doing her best as a mother and a wife.
It seems clear to me that the plot and the story is written by someone that has not a deep life experience, but rather suits to a shallow personality who has led an easy life. It is clear how empty the plot is. There is too little dialogue in 1h and 40' of film. There is not a moment in this movie, that you can really identify with those shallow characters, which make no effort to recuperate their bonds with their partners, but they rather lie on the bed all the time, doing nothing but complaint about their lives.
The filming is quite good, and I would be a little suspicious about daddy Coppola giving a hand to the daughter. But it's quite pointless because the whole plot can not be saved by any good photography or montage tricks.

Another meaningless point is that the majority of the dialogues is in Japanese without any explanation or subtitles. Maybe because the dialogues between the two main characters are so shallow and empty that the rest of the movie should be filled with something. An easy way to do it, is fill it with Japanese that nobody understands.
This film is rated as Drama/Comedy/Romance. That needs a little commenting. Drama : There is not a single point in the movie where you can really feel the drama. What's so dramatic about two bored people who want to cheat on their partners? Unless they mean the drama of the protagonist's partners. They are the only people in the movie that do something useful and maybe the ones that you could feel sorry for. Comedy : There are attempts in the movie to make people laugh with low quality humor, like a Japanese guy in a funny suit, or a Japanese director who shouts. I mean, making fun of the Japanese is not what comedy is about I think. Not a single intelligent humorous line. Romance : Where? When? In the whole film they never have a really romantic moment. They are mostly separated, each one in his own room, doing nothing but laying on the bed getting bored and boring the viewers as well.

After one hour and forty minutes of a shallow, pointless, and boring story, comes the end. This is a significant point in the movie because here you can really see the weakness of the storyline and the emptiness of the plot. The film ends with Murray whispering something that the public can't hear in Charlotte's ear. She says ok, and the film ends with them separating but smiling. That means that you can end it! Sofia can't do it, so the public will. Everyone with his personal explanation so that we will have a chat about the movie afterwards. This ending could be genius in another movie, but in this one, it just is an easy trick, a `Deus Ex Machina' that would save the story.
In conclusion, I believe that this is a very shallow story about two bored and boring people who's lives are empty because they are empty. Excuse me for using these two words so much, but they can resume the movie quite well I think. Shallow and Boring.