Disappointing

Rating: 3/10 (17 September 2003)

I was seriously disappointed by Lost in Translation. Every critic LOVED this, but absolutely nothing happens. Well, that's not entirely true: every once in a while, a Japanese person does something so unbelievably wacky and nonsensical that it strikes you as cheap if not outright racist. As a storyteller Coppola has nothing interesting to say and takes two hours to say it. I'm a huge Bill Murray fan and I thought it was mostly a waste of his talents, and a waste of time.
L.I.T. is a good example of a film that is praised as an insightful "character study" yet it told me very little about the characters. There's a lot of meaningful stares and longing looks, but we don't really get to know who these people are, because the movie is so light on details that actually matter, so light on action, and so preoccupied with its mood. Of course "action" can manifest itself in many ways, and the importance of an action may seem small but may be set up to have dire consequences. In this movie, for example, the act of simply knocking on a hotel door, or of sending your husband carpet swatches, are filled with more meaning than they would be in any other movie. Those moments were good. But it also had so much filler, including many meaningless, wordless minutes of sightseeing and lying around, and the aforementioned "aren't those Japanese wacky" moments, and a long, long scene where they sing Karaoke. For me it wasn't nearly enough. I don't need (or even want) a formulaic Hollywood story, but a good movie goes somewhere, and build in some way to something. For a highly praised art film, I was just surprised at how ultimately insignificant L.I.T. was. 3/10.