| Polygram Filmed Entertainment – Working Title Films, 1998 | Runtime: 98 minutes | Rated R |
| Starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Elliot | ||
| Written by Joel and Ethan Coen | Directed by Joel Coen | |
“The Big Lebowski” (1998) is the story of a man called The Dude. The Dude may very well be the laziest man on Earth. The Dude doesn’t work. The Dude doesn’t dress properly for public view. The Dude doesn’t care about life outside of the bowling alley, unless it’s in his car or his home. But sometimes, as our helpful narrator explains, there’s a man who, for his time and place, is the man. For Los Angeles county, California in the early 1990s, the Dude was that man.
At least that’s how the Coen brothers’ 1998 film “The Big Lebowski” looks at The Dude. The Dude’s real name is Jeffrey Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), and he is a bowler stuck on a team with people who equal his extreme laziness with extreme anger and extreme stupidity. The angry bowler is Walter Sobchak (John Goodman), who somehow turns every argument into a rant about Vietnam. The stupid one is Donnie, who has a tendency to wander into the middle of a conversation and ask stupid questions about what was already said. Donnie is played by Steve Buscemi, another example of the Steve Buscemi rule, which states that any movie can be made a little better with a little Steve Buscemi.
The Dude finds himself mixed up in a kidnapping because he has the same name as a parapalegic (David Huddleston) whose trophy wife owes money to pornographers. He finds out about Lebowski (the other one, the big Lebowski, as he is known) after one of the suspected kidnappers takes a leak on his carpet (“It really tied the room together.”). Soon after the incident, the Big Lebowski informs The Dude that his wife, Bunny (Tara Reid) has been kidnapped. Lebowski believes that The Dude can help out by delivering ransom money to the kidnappers, a bunch of nihilists from a techno-pop group called Autobahn (reference to German techno band Kraftwerk).
The kidnapping is suspected to be a hoax all along, but The Dude keeps finding so-called proof that it’s the real thing. Soon he too believes it may be a hoax, but it still takes everyone a while to figure out who it’s being staged by. The easiest answer would be Bunny, but developments indicate that it could be someone unsuspected, or it could be those who would seem too obvious.
It doesn’t matter much either way. “The Big Lebowski” isn’t really about its plot. It’s about the behavior of the characters in the situations at hand. We are presented with interesting and somewhat extreme characters who deliver mannerisms and dialogue that are, more often than not, very funny. Steve Buscemi is, as usual, delightfully quirky. Jeff Bridges has great timing as the laid back king of his own world. Julianne Moore has an interesting part here, playing the Big Lebowski’s artsy daughter who seems to carry a British accent for no reason.
“The Big Lebowski” contains almost as many oddities as it does laughs. Occasionally in their film, the Coen brothers will send The Dude into a surreal dream sequence or perhaps introduce a situation that is as unusual as the people involved. There is a scene called “Gutterballs,” which parodies Busby Berkley’s musicals and features Saddam Hussien renting bowling shoes, The Dude rolling down a lane inside a bowling ball, and Maude (Moore) dressed as a Viking with bra cups that resemble bowling balls. There is also a character called Jesus Quintana (he calls himself “the Jesus” and pronounces it the same way Christ did), a fantastic bowler who is also a creep and a pervert (he was indicted for exposing himself to an 8-year-old). And you know you’ve got an interesting movie on your hands when even the narrator (Sam Elliot) loses his train of thought.
The Coen brothers have made many good movies. “The Big Lebowski” was their follow-up to the 1996 masterpiece “Fargo.” Of course “The Big Lebowski” is nowhere near the league of its predecessor. I don’t really think that the Coen Brothers expected to get as much critical praise for this film as they got for “Fargo,” simply because “Fargo” is a damned-near impossible movie to follow up. However, “The Big Lebowski” is a lot of fun, with almost as many laughs as there are bad words. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) says that the “F” word and its variations are used 267 times in this movie. I don’t want to calculate how many times per minute that is, but that’s a lot of f*cking “F” words.
Back to Filmdog
