Lost in Translation
Universal Home Entertainment | Release Date: September 12, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
91
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 44 Critic Reviews
Positive:
42
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
VarietyDavid Rooney
The film's unhurried pace will target it for discerning audiences only, but its wry humor and coolly amused observation of contemporary Japan should score with smart urbanites. Read full review
100
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Their (Murray/Johansson) brief, wondrous encounter is the soul of this subtle, funny, melancholy film. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
What's astonishing about Sofia Coppola's enthralling new movie is the precision, maturity, and originality with which the confident young writer-director communicates so clearly in a cinematic language all her own. Read full review
100
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Fraught with a deep sadness and sense of yearning. Yet, it is also an enormously -- at times, even uproariously -- comedic film, not because it feels any obligation to be "funny" in some contrived, screenwriterly sort of way, but because Coppola has set out to make a movie set to the rhythms of real (rather than reel) life. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The fact that this kind of serious material ends up playing puckishly funny as well as poignant is a tribute both to Coppola and to her do-or-die decision to cast Murray in the lead role. Read full review
100
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Simply put, Sofia Copolla's Lost in Translation is an amazing motion picture. Read full review
100
PremiereGlenn Kenny
This is one of the year's most subtly moving films, and a strong affirmation of Coppola's substantial talent. Read full review
100
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Isn't about a May-December romance or a brief encounter in a faraway place. It's about being alone in a crowd and the power of unexpected friendships. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
I loved this movie. I loved the way Coppola and her actors negotiated the hazards of romance and comedy, taking what little they needed and depending for the rest on the truth of the characters. Read full review
100
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Thanks to two delightful performers, you're drawn powerfully to the outcome. Read full review
100
New York PostLou Lumenick
It's impossible to conceive of this ruefully funny entertainment without Bill Murray, who is nothing less than brilliant. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Here he (Murray) supplies the kind of performance that seems so fully realized and effortless that it can easily be mistaken for not acting at all. Read full review
100
SalonStephanie Zacharek
The connection between Bob and Charlotte, as Coppola shows it to us at the end of Lost in Translation, is a moment of intimate magnificence. I have never seen anything quite like it, in any movie. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Longer on atmosphere and observation than on story, but you don't mind: Coppola maintains her quietly charged tone with a certainty that would be unbelievable in a second film if you didn't suspect genetics had a hand. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
A delicate, beautifully observed study of impossible romance, Lost in Translation is one of the best films this year. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Giddily funny in a singularly American idiom, and shot, by Lance Acord, with an eagle eye for cultural absurdities, Ms. Coppola's film is also a meditation on love and longing, shot through with a sensibility that's all the more surprising for being so unfashionably tender.
100
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
This year's must-see film. Read full review
100
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
It's a bento box of shifts, feints, hints and small, sharp insights, built around a surprisingly deep core of feeling. And it confirms Coppola as an artist to watch and relish. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Smart, funny, and splendidly acted. Read full review
100
EmpireRob Fraser
With cinemas dominated by underwhelming blockbusters and formulaic rom-coms, it’s easy to become disillusioned with the state of the movies. Thank the almighty, then, for Lost In Translation, which in 102 wondrous minutes will restore your faith in the power of the medium. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
Sofia Coppola's second movie as a director is more than a breakthrough: it's an insouciant triumph. She conjures a terrifically funny, heartbreakingly sad and swooningly romantic movie from almost nowhere and just makes it look very easy - as well as very modern and very sexy. It is a funky little Brief Encounter for the new century. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Coppola both wrote and directed, and there’s a pleasing shapelessness to her scenes. She accomplishes the difficult feat of showing people being bored out of their skulls in such a way that we are never bored watching them. Read full review
90
TimeRichard Corliss
Watch Murray's eyes in the climactic scene in the hotel lobby: while hardly moving, they express the collapsing of all hopes, the return to a sleepwalking status quo. You won't find a subtler, funnier or more poignant performance this year than this quietly astonishing turn. Read full review
90
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
Gorgeously shot by Lance Acord, who makes Toyko a gaudy dreamscape that's both seductive and frightening, Lost In Translation washes away memories of "Godfather III," establishing Coppola as a major filmmaker in her own right, and reconfirming Johansson and Murray as actors of startling depth and power. Read full review
90
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
As bittersweet a brief encounter as any in American movies since Richard Linklater's equally romantic "Before Sunrise." Read full review
90
SlateDavid Edelstein
This is the Bill Murray performance we've been waiting for: Saturday Night Live meets Chekhov. Read full review
90
Washington PostStephen Hunter
It gets at something exquisitely human, so human that even movie stars feel it. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
The movie contains priceless slapstick from Bill Murray, finely tuned performances by Murray and the beautiful Scarlett Johansson and a visual and aural design that cultivates a romantic though melancholy mood. Read full review
90
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
Coppola handles her film with very pleasant economy, with a kind of warm precision. Her father, who was one of this picture's producers, can be as proud of her as we are grateful. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
A lovely, quietly thrilling thing. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Don't stall about seeing Sofia Coppola's altogether remarkable Lost in Translation. It's a class-act liftoff for the fall movie season. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson give performances that will be talked about for years. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMark Caro
Dislocated from their native country and former lives, Bob and Charlotte come to establish a language of their own. Coppola has done the same, proving she boasts one of today's truly distinct filmmaking voices. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
A smartly written, confidently directed film that delivers big laughs while developing two of the year's most earnest characters and some of its most rewarding sentiments. Read full review
88
USA TodayMike Clark
Romantic comedies with two low-key leads can be asking for trouble, but one senses that the actors must have clicked on some fundamental level. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
It's a sign of just how much Coppola respects her characters that she doesn't make us privy to that final line: It is only meant for them to share. But like the rest of the ethereal Lost in Translation, you don't need to have it spelled out in order to feel it. Read full review
80
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Not much happens, but Coppola is so gentle and witty an observer that the movie casts a spell. [15 September 2003, p. 100]
80
Film ThreatStina Chyn
By the time the film was half over, I was ready to catch the next flight to Japan. Until travel arrangements can be made, though, I'll just watch Lost in Translation again. Read full review
80
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
There isn't another American screen actor who could have given this performance, not one who so deftly could have navigated the razor's edge separating the wiseacre and the wise. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Arguably, Lost in Translation is the American answer to Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece, "In the Mood for Love," though less about history, more about infatuation. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Coppola does a fair job of capturing the fish-tank ambience of nocturnal, upscale Tokyo and showing how it feels to be a stranger in that world, and an excellent job of getting the most from her lead actors. Unfortunately, I'm not sure she accomplishes anything else. Read full review
63
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
This movie registers like a pop song that enters the mind only in fragments because, as a whole, it lacks the style or substance to be memorable. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Coppola lacks a firm grip on this material, and it starts to get away from her midway through. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
It can be funny, but the humor is too often based in stereotypical perceptions of Asians (they're short, they're laughably polite, they eat weird food), and Coppola shamelessly invites us to laugh along with Murray's character, who, believe it or not, thinks it's hilarious when his hosts get their "r"s and "l"s switched. Read full review
60
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
Coppola hasn't delivered a turkey--it's a cute little movie, if not as rich as her brother Roman's similarly themed "CQ"--but when work this potentially satisfying remains flatly obvious, it's almost worse than being flat-out bad. Read full review
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