Murray, the wise ass completely lost

Rating: 9/10 (9 February 2007)

This little gem was the brainchild of director, Sofia Coppola. Bill Murray gives his finest performance to date and you can see that he could relate to the material. He plays an aging actor who has fallen on hard times and takes a job that will make him a lot of money but it is in something as undignified as a commercial.
Coppola does a terrific job of showing us both Bob Harris, the character but she also shows Bill Murray, the screen character who has finally run out of gas. We even get a shot of a young Murray from an earlier film, with the old Murray staring in disbelief of what he is now.
Scarlett Johansson is very touching as a woman who is totally confused about what she is and where she is going. Bob and her character Charlotte form a friendship and you can see that they might be falling for each other. One of the surprises of the plot was that it doesn't end with them having sex as is the normal standard in most films. Instead we get a shot of Johansson's disappointed look when she finds out that Bob has another woman in his hotel room.
There are many exterior shots of Tokyo and it looks absolutely stunning and the way Coppola shows the Japanese people without condescending their culture, but still make it kind of funny is a tricky feat but she pulls it off.
So what more can you say. Murray should have won the Oscar for this magnificent performance and Johansson should at least have been nominated. Let's hope that he hasn't lost courage of doing something like this again because how many Garfield films are there left to do.