Lost: the moral of the story

Rating: 3/10 (20 October 2003)

My rating: 3/10
Lost in Translation suffers from having no central theme, moral, or fundamental message to communicate. If it were a mindless screwball comedy it could be forgiven this flaw; however, the movie does appear to have the pretensions of communicating some sort of deeper meaning. But the best moral of the story that I can come up with is: people in strange foreign cultures, cut off from family, will bond together and make some bad choices until their return flights depart. Hardly an earth shattering revelation.
Bill Murray does give a fine performance, and has several opportunities to showcase his ironic wit, especially when filming a whiskey commercial. The film also functions as an interesting Tokyo travelogue and an introduction to various aspects of Japanese popular culture, including the pachinko parlors, arcades, street youths, strip clubs, and Japanese television. Bill Murray's visit to an over-the-top gaudy Japanese talk show is another one of the highlights.
Unfortunately, the film's flaws outweigh the positives. Besides lacking meaning, the plot takes several illogical turns. Just when Bill Murray's character and the young married woman he meets appear on the verge of deepening their relationship, a much older floozy steals his affections for the night, which he instantly regrets. This prevents the film from developing into a love story - it's a friend story, and one in which the friends aren't acting terribly rationally. The young woman whom Bill Murray's character pursues is remarkably directionless; it's hard to believe that someone who graduated from Yale with a philosophy degree would be following her husband on a photo shoot assignment, listening to pop psychology motivational speakers, and crying over her experiences in a Japanese temple. Some of the humor is more clichéd than funny, especially the ditzy blonde American actress.
By contrast, Groundhog Day, which is a more mainstream film, was not only much funnier, but also had a message to communicate, about how one should conduct one's life.