Lost - 1.5 Hours

Rating: 2/10 (18 August 2006)

I don't know if this is a true statistic but apparently 99% of Japanese people have never left Japan. About 70% of Americans never leave America, so there is a similarity between the two countries - they don't understand foreigners. Allegedly.
While Japan keeps itself to itself, America makes a lot of loud pronouncements about freedom, good and evil etc and exports its soldiers to various trouble spots around the world to "restore order". Japan keeps the rest of the world at arm's length. America invites it in then wonders why it talks funny or won't eat pork.
I imagine that most of the high scores for Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" come from Americans, because the film is not international. Yes it's well-acted and the photography is beautiful but it didn't really make me laugh or feel sad or do anything other than sit there watching, wondering when something interesting would happen.
The film is shot from an exclusively American perspective. All Japs are short. All Japs talk funny when they speak English. All Japs are inscrutable. Jap media culture is nothing like good old American media culture. Wow, Sofia, you went all that way and that's all you could come up with? Maybe you should have stuck to acting. On second thoughts, maybe not. Remember Sofia's role as Mary Corleone in "The Godfather III"?
The "Lip my tights" sequence is a prime indicator that Sofia Coppola's script isn't half as clever as she thinks it is. Japanese people have difficulty with the "L" phone because it doesn't exist in their language. Spelt phonetically using Japanese katakana characters (common in the Japanese transcription of foreign words,) the English word "Clap" becomes "Crap". "Rip" remains as "Rip" after transcription. It's an out-dated and somewhat racist misconception that all south-east Asians reverse their L's and R's when they speak "Engrish".
Apparently you get more out of "Lost in Translation" if you watch it again. No thanks. Even taking Bill Murray's perfect comic/dramatic performance into account, this film is too boring and too far up itself to warrant a second viewing.