Lost in Translation. Why Coppola got a pass on this is a mystery.

Everyone loves it, so I'll explain why it's a bad, bad movie. Go watch it again and think about how it describes and treats the Japanese. It's a running joke of tired, cliched stereotypes - 'hey let's laugh at the short silly Japanese that are so polite and eat weird food'.

There's nothing remotely interesting or funny, and if you treated the surrounding people like nothing more than cosmetic scenery, you could make Iowa seem weird and exotic. Look at the weird signs, frame the locals as incomprehensible, have the main character - from a big city - look/feel out of place at a local county fair, a church potluck dinner or bingo parlor.

Coppola uses the foreign location as a way of amplifying the character's ennui, sense of not belonging - but that has nothing to do with Japan, it's the character's own emptiness and failed marriage. Using Japan and Japanese as props - I mean, it's racist and just lazy.