Sketchy, Episodic, Boring, (Too) Feminine -- Waste of Time

Rating: 2/10 (24 March 2014)

The movie opens with a prolonged shot of an oblong, young female arse, looming gigantically on the screen -- and that may well have been the best part of _Lost in Translation_; it only gets worse from then on. It is incomprehensible and mind-blowing, as to why so much praise has been heaped on this indescribably dull and, above all, *empty* movie. There is no content here, no substance -- just some feminine musing. To be precise, obviously a *wealthy*, bored-to-death female's musing; she is trapped in a luxurious hotel in a Japanese metropolis; she has nothing to do, and so she spends her time observing her fellow hotel guests, and flirting with them. The principal of them is played by Bill Murray, as engaging as ever -- but neither his charm, nor Scarlett Johansson's loveliness can rescue this dud of a movie. I'm sorry, but the crushing majority of humans are *not* faced with this sort of would-be dilemma: being well-provided-for and well-fed in a luxurious hotel, having nothing to do. Most people would jump up and down for joy if *those* were their only worries. Now when you consider that the movie was written and directed by Sofia Coppola, the daughter of the first-rate celebrity director Francis Ford Coppola -- well, it's perfectly possible that *that* was the sheltered, privileged environment in which she was growing up; yes, it must have been excruciatingly boring. Yawn! Unfortunately, that is the *only* thing superbly communicated to the viewers of _Lost in Translation_: excruciating boredom. There is nothing but an endless regurgitation of the same half-motifs, with nothing really happening throughout the course of the movie; there are no developments, and you end the movie exactly where you began watching it: that is, to be precise, nowhere at all. I had to exert all of my will-power to be able to finish watching _Lost in Translation_. In particular, Bill Murray's character and his interactions on the phone with his distant, materialistic wife -- that is just trite, a monumental clichÃ© if there ever was one.