There is certainly plenty of polarity in people's reviews of this opus! It's either "oh, yes!" or "go figure." I'm afraid that I found it rather tedious myself; it seemed to go on for hours. Here are these well-off people in a swank hotel in this brilliant city, and can't think of anything to do with themselves. Well, of course they're busy taking stock of their lives, but that didn't seem very compellingly conveyed. It's acting; it's illusion; these are actors tasked with making us believe what their characters are supposedly experiencing, creating empathy for what are fictive emotions.

Here we have Bill Murray in a non-Bill Murray role, and we keep waiting for him to be Bill Murray --which is generally why we watch him-- but he has little chance to shine. "Groundhog Day", for example, was tailored to his strengths and succeeded admirably, while he was all wrong for "The Razor's Edge". "Lost in Translation's" call girl scene with "lip my stocking!" was intended to be funny (I think), and in the right hands could have been hilarious. But it merely seems awkward. Murray is out of his element here, seriously miscast. His character is famous as an action hero, an expert at martial arts who gained a wide Asian following-- a Chuck Norris type. Murray just isn't convincing as this sort of celebrity, but what the heck, we can let him take his best shot.

I really couldn't detect any chemistry between him and Scarlett Johansson, who somehow didn't seem to have much presence-- but lips, plenty of lips. This was earlier in her career, when the camera lingered endlessly, almost pornographically, over her darned lips, to the detriment of recording her actual performance.

This is exactly the sort of film that Woody Allen can make effective, and Johansson of course later became one of his favored actresses. Think how this premise would have blossomed in his hands! Could he have worked with Bill Murray, though? One tries to imagine his ideal casting choice. All and all, I have to regard this film as a missed opportunity. I'm glad it worked for so many people, but it could have worked far, far better.