Aaron feels he was two actors away from a movie that might have made his A-list...

Ok, we’ll just get this out on the table: I’m a sucker for romance movies comprised primarily of two people talking while walking around interesting locales. I realize this is a comparatively narrow genre and stems mainly from my unabashed love for Before Sunrise/Sunset (I think of it as one movie on two discs), but I don’t care – it’s true love and true love lasts a lifetime.

So when I first heard of Lost in Translation, I got giddy, cause I was like, “Ooh ooh ooh!! Another movie in my favorite genre; that makes a whole three!!” Then I saw who was in it: Bill Murray trying to be serious and Scarlett “Two-talents” Johansson trying to be taken seriously. This was the first time in almost twenty years Murray was doing a non-comedy (playing Polonius in the Ethan Hawke version of Hamlet doesn’t count, he’s there for like, five minutes). This turned out to be Johansson’s big break; if not for Translation, she may have gone on being “the other girl from Ghost World” and wouldn’t have gotten to take up space in so many movies since.

I don’t have anything against comedians trying to do serious work; sometimes it works out very well (Adam Sandler, Punch Drunk Love; Ben Stiller, Permanent Midnight; Robin Williams, a few different things), sometimes it doesn’t (Adam Sandler in Spanglish, Jim Carrey in The Majestic). I don’t have a problem with ingénues stretching beyond their reach, either; sometimes a star is born, but usually the results are as unintentionally hilarious as comedians failing at drama.

"It’s not that rich white folks aren’t entitled to their depression, but this movie is just steeped in it"

When I saw the movie, though, I was just so thoroughly underwhelmed by the performances (except Anna Faris’ grating Cameron Diaz impression), whose thick glaze of tired-and-bored-rich-white-people topping both annoyed and bored me to distraction. I very quickly tired of long shots of Two-talents staring emptily out windows in her underwear, looking forlorn, spiritually dispossessed and full of shitty bored-white-girl ennui. It’s not that rich white folks aren’t entitled to their depression, but this movie is just steeped in it - it’s ennui tea, served alongside a meal of boredloaf and mashed sadness, slathered in woe-is-me gravy. It is the loudest, longest SIIIIIIIIIIIIGHHHHHH of a teenage girl the world has ever known.

And that just bores the shit out of me.

This movie's problems start with the privileged rich-white-people depression woven through its self-important screenplay and are reinforced by its listless, lazy "life is so hard" cinematography, as directed by an overrated, privileged rich-white-person daughter of a world class director who hasn't made a good movie in over thirty years. Bob and Charlotte are barely-there character sketches whose problems, though sympathetic, are not an adequate substitute for development. I don’t feel sorry for them to the extent the movie requires in order to justify the waaaaambulance ride I’m expected to take.

The more a movie bores me, the more in-depth I think, “Why?” When something is poorly made, I don’t care. I mean, I care that it was poorly made, but I don’t think about it later, I just chalk it up to a loss when it’s done and go on with my life. Boredom, however, and particularly disappointment, breed obsession in me - I need to know why I didn’t like something I was mathematically inclined to enjoy or appreciate.

"They find each other and go mope around Tokyo, being disaffected, bored and white"

I like whimsy; I love a good elegiac tone in shades of grey; I think the characters, as they stand at the very beginning, are interesting, but nothing is done with that over the course of the movie. So they find each other and go mope around Tokyo, being disaffected, bored and white (I keep harping on their whiteness because I think you need at least three character traits to be considered a “character”). I think there’s an exceptional kernel of an idea for a movie here, but the execution is too shoegazing for my taste, too wrapped up in itself. I hate to call things pretentious, but if the bra fits...

So in an effort to rationalize why I’ve given this movie so many chances to change my opinion of it, I’ve started wondering what could’ve been done differently. Assuming an identical crew, screenplay and location, I’ve tried imagining it with different actors as the leads. The possibilities actually excited me and made me pay more attention to a movie I find existentially tedious.

So I made a little mind game out of it - I came up with short casting call-type descriptions of the characters and tried to think up combinations of people who would be appropriate, marketable (at different levels), and... well... better than the actual leads.

Male Lead: 45-60 - An actor past his prime who has come to Tokyo for a week to film a whiskey commercial for the money, but also to get away from his failing marriage. Tall, a "leading man gone to seed" vibe is good (if you can really go to seed for us, that would be cool too). Must look foolish in a yellow camo-print t-shirt.

Female Lead: 22-25 - A young woman who has come with her photographer husband to Tokyo while he works. The relatively recently married couple are never together as the husband is very distant and distracted, leaving the young wife alone and lonely in a place she is a complete alien. 5' to 5'6", possibly taller (compare male lead height), any hair or complexion. Must look cute in a bobbed pink wig.

These are my choices for Bob and Charlotte in order of realism based on 2002 casting realities: age, ability, range, appearance, but not availability (it’s more effort than I’m willing to put in to research what everyone was doing at the time Lost in Translation was actually filming in October 2002). I came up with a couple older woman/younger man combinations, too. For fun, I’m including a score for the camo-shirt foolishness and pink wig cuteness, which seems as likely a casting consideration as any other for this piddle.

Tom Hanks and Natalie Portman?

- Tom Hanks is still America's sweetheart no matter what movies he makes; so long as it's character-age appropriate, he can do just about whatever he pleases and it’ll make money. Besides, you know he would have totally kicked the shit out this anemic script. A male lead that strong would need the strongest "Young Hollywood" actress in the age range at the time. Granted, the hype surrounding the theory of her talent is based from the movies she made in the nineties (Leon, Heat, Beautiful Girls) and she hasn’t made that big a splash, performance-wise, this century to live up to whatever legend she accrued as a teenager, but in 2002, we didn’t know any better. Shirt/Wig: 10/10 (ever seen Closer?)

Denzel Washington and Keira Knightley?

- Because on paper, it sounds AWESOME. Actually, it's entirely feasible: he needed a hit after the double-disappointment of "John Q" and "Antwone Fisher", his follow-ups to "Training Day". A quiet little talky romance to remind us why we gave him an Oscar would’ve done him good. As for her, of the six movies in which she appeared in 2002, the only one anybody paid attention to was Bend it Like Beckham. That year, she lucked into Pirates of the Caribbean and stardom. I think she'd've been good as Charlotte, especially against him. Shirt/Wig: 9/8

Billy Bob Thornton and Sarah Polley?

- They're both good and don't get too many major chances to show it. He's definitely seedy, so strangely, the camo shirt wouldn’t’ve looked as ridiculous on him as it would on most people. He didn’t do much of note coming off Monster’s Ball until Bad Santa in 2003. She was lined up to be the next “it girl” following Go, but dropped out of Almost Famous to make a little movie in Canada. She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about mainstream Hollywood and has a steady career starring in small films that keep her out of its eye. Shirt/Wig: 7/8

Liam Neeson and Jessica Biel?

- He’s awesome and she’s not. This would have been her shot, just like it was Scarlett's. Shirt/Wig: 9/7

Chow Yun-Fat and Shu Qi?

- Because they're the right age, they're both talented, and neither has gotten a decent shot over here. Just translate the script to Cantonese and let's go. You don't even need to change the city. Where would you go? New York? Fuckin why? To make the flick more palatable to white people? Neither of them speak Japanese, you could leave it in Tokyo. You know what? Some company in Hong Kong ought to just remake the movie with them. Shirt/Wig: 10/8

On a less committed note, one might also consider...

Samuel L Jackson and Anna Paquin? S/W:9/8
Nicolas Cage and Leelee Sobieski? S/W: 8/7
Monica Bellucci and Ryan Gosling? W/S: 10/9
Bruce Willis and Selma Blair? S/W: 9/9
Mike Myers and Rachel McAdams? S/W: 10/9
John Travolta and Kate Hudson? S/W: 10/8
Kurt Russell and Kate Hudson? (sick, I know) S/W: 9/8
Cate Blanchett and Topher Grace? W/S: 9/10

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