Didn't much understand what she found there either, it seems, and I have to agree with Odeon's Damien on this one, that's what bugged me most for about the first hour. Yes, I get it, Japan is an odd place, people there don't speak English too well, their TV is weird, there's lots of them, they have strange arcades and bars, there's plenty of neon.... I didn't learn much more than I might watching You Only Live Twice on a wet Sunday afternoon. What I did learn is that apparently Jim Morrison is still influencing screenwriters, as his maxim "People are strange, when you're a stranger" could be applied to the whole film.

Almost all of the incidental details are bang on, of course, like the frenzied business card exchanges, the hundreds of hotel staff who greet you (even if they don't know you're a big-shot movie star), the restaurants where you order by pointing and the lush hotel bars with low lit tables and sinister looking businessmen. Plus crap English speaking support bands. I saw it all in my week in Tokyo on business, and Lost in Translation brought it flooding back. The only things missing were the toilet with the heated seat and hose that squirted up my bum, the free Japanese newspaper that gave me a headache when I tried to read it and the fact that I seemed to get fish at every meal, regardless of what I ordered.

Honestly, given just a small twist Lost in Translation could have been National Lampoon's Japanese Vacation (with Rusty and Audrey now played by DJ Qualls and Anne Hathaway, respectively; we'll have to see if there's a hole in Chevy's schedule), complete with Rusty getting drunk and doing karaoke, Audrey getting felt up on a rush-hour train and causing a near riot, and Ellen ending up in a Love Hotel with Clark, getting her key swiped, then bursting in on a party of salarymen in her underwear. Let's shoot this sucker!

Unfortunately Lost in Translation stays firmly in 'bittersweet, thoughtful drama' territory, with Bill's movie star Bob (sadly lacking his aquatic partner Gil) being so thoroughly confused by the Japanese habit of replacing 'R' with 'L' ("Lip my stocking" etc), that he has a mid-life crisis, which means cruising Tokyo's streets with Scarlett Johansson's pouting, intellectually underappreciated Charlotte.