Sofia Coppola tried making pictures, but they were mediocre.

Rating: Null/10 (24 July 2004)

"Lost in Translation" is best seen for what it is - a small, intimate movie rather than a life-changing Classic Movie Experience.
Nothing much really happens, and it all seems like Sofia Coppola's vacation clips stitched together with some fragments of a plot; if she wanted to make a movie from a tourist's point of view, she succeeded completely. But it seems, personally, like "Frantic" all over again; in that movie what should have been a thriller was buried under the feeling of being a stranger in a strange land, and here it's all mood and not much else. Filmed in a subdued manner and with a lack of underscore (there's so little that the credit for "original music" comes as a shock), it's almost like a slightly subpar HBO offering.
Though it's hard not to think a lot of the movie's problems would be solved if the actor and the graduate had simply bothered to buy an English-Japanese/Japanese-English dictionary (but then, it would have robbed Sofia Coppola of some chances for amusing scenes where they try to get by without knowing the language), "Lost in Translation" is the kind of movie that's best enjoyed for the individual pleasures rather than the whole. Like Bill Murray's fine turn as the washed-up screen actor; the very lovely Scarlett Johansson as the graduate; the dance of the Japanese TV chat show host; Murray and Johansson doing karaoke; and the women bouncing in the swimming pool as Murray swims.
No real fireworks, and too fragmented to make the major impression its supporters claim for it, but not the massively overrated bore others argue it is either. In the end, the movie IS watchable after the lingering opening shot of Scarlett Johansson's bottom, even if it never quite matches it.