She's bored because she's got a rich husband and she's in one of the most fascinating cities in the world, so obviously she has nothing to do except sit around her room all day listening to self-help books on the search for the soul. Little does she know that the key to inner happiness is hovering behind her in the lift one day, and before long Bob gets up the nerve to talk to her - the rest is your movie.

I sound bitter. But if I am at all it's just because of the big, Oscar-talk-fuelled build up this has gotten. It's good, it just ain't great, is all I'm saying; it gets extra points because it's got Bill, and because it's set in Tokyo (which, let no-one tell you otherwise, is one of the coolest places on the planet). It just loses a bunch more points for portraying the Japanese so typically, and for refusing to raise its tourist observations above the level of 'Let's Go Japan'.

However, when the camera's trained on the actors Lost in Translation is nicely observed (there's that word again) pleasing to the eye and very well acted. It just doesn't linger in the brain. If anyone other than Sofia Coppola was making it you'd either have Bob 'n' Charlotte eloping together at the end, or more likely you'd cast Bob a whole lot younger (Ethan Hawke?) and call the whole thing Lost, Like, in Tokyo. They'd get together before reel three, then.

As it is, Lost in Translation felt to me like the last few moments before you fall dead asleep, lying on a hotel room bed drunk after a sponsored bar excursion - wondering just what the hell you said to that rather attractive PR girl, and deciding that one way or the other it doesn't matter, because booze is great and so are you.

At the time it feels nice, but when you wake up you only remember things in flashes, and you tell yourself you won't do that again - but you know, deep down, that you'll end up in exactly the same situation before too long.