2003 story of friendshipRating: 16/20 (Jen: 15/20)
Plot: American actor Bob Harris travels to Tokyo to make an easy buck filming a few commercials. He's lonely and surly until he meets a buddy, fellow tourist Charlotte. They hit the karaoke hard!
This might have the best opening shot of all time, the prettiest pink, gratuitous undergarments. I like Scarlett Johansson just because she had the urge to butcher a bunch of Tom Waits tracks. She's the type of actress I like to imagine eating pickles, lots of them in a variety of sizes and forms. Spears, hamburger, those giant honkers you you have to retrieve from barrels with tongs. Bill Murray's the exact actor for his part. He can just stand around and look like he's in the center of a pretty dark funk. I like how their characters' relationship develops, naturally and without a single Hollywood moment. What really makes this movie interesting is that the real story is left out. You get a glimpse into the source of Charlotte's funk and loneliness (that jerk, Giovanni Ribisi) and you hear Bob describe his marriage or talk to his wife on the phone (Lost in Translation trivia--comedy legend Don Rickles does the voice of Murray's wife), but the story here doesn't focus on any real issues, just the distraction from those issues. It's a movie that requires a reading-between-the-lines, and personal connections would make this a different experience for everybody, I think. Things do lag a little in the middle when the characters are having more fun than I was having (or probably have ever had), but overall, this is a nice quiet little movie.
3 comments:
Yeah, its a nice little film. Murry is fantastic in it, and somehow Johansson doesnt get knocked off the screen by his charisma, which shows she is doing something right.
I really enjoyed it the one time I saw it, and even though it has come on cable countless times since then, I have never had the urge to revisit this film. Its like I got everything I needed from it the one time I saw it, and that is good enough. A 17 for me.
I like this movie a lot and it proved I was on the right track when I was drooling over Scarlet in Ghost World. Replace her with an actress I find undroolworthy and the movie is sunk. In fact I find her a really bad actress (her worst roll being in the Coen Bros. Man Who Disappeared or whatever it was called she sucked so bad it ruined it for me) but her screen presence and the way Sophia films her with modern bi-sexual lust makes this a good 'un! and Bill Murray.
"Modern bi-sexual lust"...interesting.
I don't think I think she's a bad actress at all.
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