A dead loss

Not for the first time and, sadly, almost certainly not for the last time, Sam Snort asks the question: what the fuck is wrong with young people nowadays?

Blessed as he is with the virtue of eternal youth – albeit, crucially, seasoned with the wisdom of the ages – Sam generally prefers to adopt a sympathetic attitude when dealing with the world’s greenhorns. After all, it ain’t easy being young and therefore stupid. So, for example, I’m happy enough to indulge their innocent flirtation with The Darkness on the grounds that the onset of underarm hair will be time enough for them to start checking out the Heep, the Ash, the ‘Hat and all the other true giants of, as we like to say, the rock era.
Radiohead are a bit more problematic, not least because, objectively-speaking, they are such a stinking vat of sludge. But even here, I’m prepared to humour the pimply brigade – after all, when you’re too young and thick to get Joyce, Proust or even Henry Cow, it’s easy to be taken in by psychic constipation masquerading as existential angst. Easy enough to convince yourself that fiddly bits alternating with heavy riffing allied to the shrieking of some cross-eyed bozo who never gets the girl, is the very definition of the chin-strokingly complex (when, in fact, as any fule kno, the most sophisticated statement in the whole rock canon is ‘Louie Louie’).
Anyway, not to worry, soon enough they’ll grow out of it and, like embarrassed ex-fans of Yes, Genesis, King Crimson and fucking Fruup, will look back and wonder why the hell their ma spent all that money on child psychology sessions and anti-depressants when she should just have disconnected the headphones and ordered in a hooker.

Side-Splitters
So, yes, Sam is an understanding kinda guy, indeed a man of boundless tolerance and compassion – but even he has his breaking point. And it was reached last week when I betook myself to the local Enormoplex to check out one of the most celebrated and critically-acclaimed movies of the year – Lost In Translation.
Look. Never mind what anyone else says – Sam Snort is here to tell you that this one is a flat-out stinkeroo, a veritable Radiohead of the silver screen, and in its status as overnight cult classic, a textbook illustration of the dumbing down of a culture that no longer simply values style over substance – in itself a dubious proposition, unless you’re talking about Handsome Dick Manitoba – but which has now entirely lost the ability to distinguish between the two.
Let’s deal with some of the minor but enormously irritating problems first. Much fun is made at the start of the movie of how the Japanese don’t speak proper, especially when it comes to pronouncing the letter ‘r’. Now, hell, I don’t want to spoil the side-splitters for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, but if I tell you that ‘Roger’ Moore becomes ‘Lodger’ Moore, that ‘Rat’ Pack becomes ‘Lat’ Pack and that a hotel hooker says ‘Lip my stockings’ instead of ‘Rip my stockings’ – well, oops, do you know, I think I’ve just given away all the funny bits. Sorry about that.
Back in the ’70s when Sam was first managing the ‘Hat, there was a sit-com on British TV called, if memory serves, Mind Your Language. The thing was set in a language school and the jolly wheeze here was that the producers had not one but, oh, maybe a dozen different nationalities with which to have endless fun, as the students grappled with, and frequently mangled, the English tongue. Even on a steady diet of spliffs and nitrous oxide, I don’t recall myself or the ‘Hat laughing even once at this shameless exercise in finger-pointing and sniggering, and back then we were the kind of guys who thought it was hilarious when once of us contracted a dose of the clap.
Mind Your Language. Jesus, that heap of shit wouldn’t even get near Channel 5 these days so can anyone please explain why it is that Lost In Translation’s entirely cynical bid for the same cheap laughs is either ignored, downplayed or – oh, please – passed off as ironic commentary by the crits?
Then there’s the problem of the character played by Scarlet Johansson. The pitch here is that she’s unhappily married, alienated, lost, wondering what to do with her life blah, blah, blah. Two questions the movie doesn’t bother to answer: (1) How on earth did she end up married to such a dickhead in the first place and (2) since she’s just out of college, wouldn’t getting an oul’ job solve a lot of her problems? But no, we’re in the Far East – where when they aren’t speaking funny or singing Karaoke, they’re communing with the Gods – and so we have endure wistful shots of herself staring longingly at monks, tying ribbons to trees and generally behaving as though her actions each day are dictated by turning over a page in that odious manual of cosmic bufoonery, The Little Book Of Calm.

Trouser-Snake
Then there’s Bill Murray who, to be fair, does a reasonable job of playing a mid-life crisis male who’s lost, alienated, wondering what to do with his life blah blah blah. Only problem: my old buddy Jack Nicholson did this infinitely better in the wonderful About Schmidt. So, if you haven’t already done so, go to see that instead.
And so, finally, to the crux of the problem with Lost In Translation. To re-cap, the set-up involves two alienated people, one young and befuddled, one old and decaying, coming together in an alien city – where they speak funny, remember – and they meet a few times and they go to a party and they even lie on the same bed for a bit and…nothing else happens. Yes, you read right. They don’t get it on. The only tongue-mangling is of English. There is no disrobing. Not even a bit of slobbering. The beast retains only one back. The trouser-snake sleeps tonight. And every night. In short, and not to put too fine a point on it: THERE’S NO FUCKING POONTANG IN THIS FUCKING MOVIE.
But what about that scene where he gets pissed and sleeps with the bar singer, you ask plaintively. To which I reply: what scene, exactly? To be sure, we get the night before and the morning after, but as for the juicy meat in the sandwich – frankly, not a sausage.
Thus, Lost In Translation – Last Tango In Paris without the pound of butter.
Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort esq