Minimalist acting doesn't come across

Rating: 3/10 (25 February 2004)

Ok, good stuff first: the aesthetics of the movie are very nice. Static lingering shots of the interesting cityscape of Tokyo, a cool, clean touch.
Unfortunately this aloofness carries over into the acting, or rather non-acting, because the protagonists hardly say anything, especially to each other.
Bill Murray is perenially bewildered and accepts whatever comes his way with vacuous boredom. Johansson looks nice with her big, strange puffy lips, but also extremely uninteresting. None of them have any meaningful lines, their characters are only sketched slightly and don't develop.
The minimalist approach might be considered cool and very 2003, but it really translates into a couple of characters that just don't touch the spectator.
Only redeeming feature: the superficial view into Japanese culture and a city we hardly ever see portrayed in the West.
(Japan and Japanese culture by the way only serves as a backdrop which the protagonists can be amused by. Yes, we know Japanese people pronounce "l" as "r", but in our time and age and in a supposedly serious movie, couldn't we have had a bit of a deeper interaction with Japan than this, in the movie?)