Some decent moments, but I fail to see what a lot of the fuss is about

Rating: 5/10 (1 August 2017)

Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a faded movie star who is in Japan promoting whiskey - he is just about recognisable enough to gain this endorsement. He has a troubled home-life with a wife who seems to both harass and undermine him constantly. Staying in the same hotel is Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a young married woman who is in Japan with her photographer husband John (Giovanni Ribisi). Charlotte feels neglected and unloved and when her husband goes away for a few days she spends a lot of her time with Bob and it turns out that they both aren't so different...
Many of the problems with this film are confined to the first half of the film where proceedings are drawn out painfully slowly; clearly this approach has been employed as a way of developing Bob and Charlotte as people and to show their own personal struggles, but to be perfectly honest I didn't find either of their characters or individual story arcs to be all that interesting. The second half of the film is much better when Bob and Charlotte begin communicating with each other and hanging out together - there is a genuine warm bond between the pair and it is quite touching watching them on screen together; I could genuinely see that there was some chemistry there and I felt that there was an attraction between them in an unconventional sense.
Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray were both good here and their wonderful and natural chemistry together does go a long way in making many of the scenes where they appear together to be rather enjoyable.
One thing I will applaud Coppola on is that she does do a good job in developing Bob and Charlotte's friendship and rather than cheapening the film by showing the pair lusting after each other we're given reasons to believe why they may be drawn to each other. I think their similar personality traits are what draw them to one another more than anything else which does make their relationship slightly more involving.
Lost in Translation unevenness is what lets it down slightly and whilst it undeniably has its strengths and moments some of the dull spots it encounters here and there prevent it from being as great as all of the hype suggests it is.