(NOTE: This review is coming from someone who's actually LIVED in Japan their whole life - and my translating is just okay)

Groundhog Day >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Lost In Translation

That's a MUCH better film you ought to be checking out right now, with meaning and entertainment. This film was WAY over-hyped by the Nostalgia Critic (lulz). I don't care if so many critics liked this film; I don't care if Scarlett Johansen is mostly known for this film! It is surely one of the most boring and undeveloped films I've seen!

If you aren't feeling very lonely right now, you very well may by the time you've finished reading this review. For it is the review of a movie that woos, romances and longs after loneliness. A movie that is capable of reaching down inside the most gregarious, convivial person in the world and drawing to the surface a kernel of desperate detachment.

Bob is an over-the-hill, middle-aged movie star who relies on his accumulated fame to keep him in the money through retirement. He's in Tokyo to earn $2 million for shooting a whiskey commercial. Charlotte is a young college graduate, recently married and tagging along with her photographer husband on a business trip. Both wind up at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, with lots of time on their hands and no one to share it with. After 25 years, Bob's marriage is shaky, suffering from his frequent absences. After two years, Charlotte's not sure who it is she married, or why. Both are tired. Bored. Lonely. And emotionally fragile. So when they meet, there's an instant connection. Age and social status (or even marital status, for that matter) seem irrelevant as the two cradle drinks at the hotel bar, share lunches, midnight parties and 4 a.m. heart-to-hearts.

Director Sophia Coppola (Francis Ford's daughter) draws on her own experiences in Tokyo to bring it to life, but effortlessly. Bob and Charlotte's collective pensiveness and dislocation is backlit by the Japanese capital's freneticism. And the contrast is used to good effect. Racing elevated trains, throngs of pedestrians, flashing neon signs, and the din of bad karaoke don't neutralize the angst, they accentuate, and exacerbate it to the point that its nearly tangible.

Bill Murray has always had a melancholy streak. But he typically uses it as a foil for his humor. Here, he wears it on his sleeve, refusing to duck and cover behind mirth and frivolity. And in doing so he delivers the performance of a lifetime. His on-screen companion, Scarlett Johanssen (The Man Who Wasn't There, The Horse Whisperer), easily keeps pace, allowing onlookers a riveting glimpse of the tragedy that occurs when youthful energy and enthusiasm crash into directionlessness and amorality.

If one refuses to give in to the movie's moodiness, it becomes merely a dim documentary of two individuals' plodding trips to Tokyo; They eat, they go for walks, they gaze out over the city from their generic hotel rooms, etc. Indeed, eliminate emotion from the equation and "Lost in Translation" stops working in ANY language. But it's impossible to separate what's happening on-screen with what happens in your heart. And that is what has made this movie a critic's darling. It's also the pit it falls into while the crowds are obliviously cheering. Because of those strong emotions racing back and forth between projected image and human heart, moviegoers will find themselves relishing the connection and bond they see "innocently" forming between Bob and Charlotte. You're compelled to desire their happiness, and the only way they'll ever be happy, you become convinced, is for them to be together. Never mind that that would mean the destruction of two separate families. Sucked in to the moment, it's easy not to care.

This film also includes mumbo-jumbo about our souls picking our path through life before we are born. And it's awful that they had to include disgusting & demonic Shintoist and Buddhist references and shrines into the film; that's ultimately when the film jumped the shark for me. The people invented this false cults and religions are FAR beyond superstitious and need to have their heads examined.

Hollywood gets a lot of things wrong, and wants to make you believe their films are based on reality; well think again! Hollywood has become more HollyWEIRD these days!

And a little bit of useful information of history for you foreigners wishing to visit Japan: People in Osaka are a lot more foregoing, optimistic, extroverted, sociable, kind, lighthearted, & entertaining than people in Tokyo. Because back during the Edo Period, Osaka was mostly filled with merchants, while Tokyo was mostly filled with samurai warriors; so the historical personalities are still somewhat existent in their current state. Just thought I'd throw that out for you people, because I do think Tokyo is one of the most cliché'd cities in the world to visit.

3/10

PS: Sophia's a hack