THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)
"All The Dude ever wanted was his rug back."
3 out of ****
Starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore
Directed by Joel Coen
Written by Joel & Ethan Coen
Cinematography by Roger Deakins
The Coen brothers make two kinds of movies. The first kind are idiosyncratic takes on established Hollywood genres: BLOOD SIMPLE, MILLER'S CROSSING, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY. The second kind are just plain idiosyncratic: dark comedies which can only be described as Coen-esque, and represent their best work (RAISING ARIZONA, BARTON FINK, FARGO). Their latest effort, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, belongs in the latter category, in that it is a non-generic dark comedy (unless KINGPIN-meets-EXCESS BAGGAGE is a genre)--but it is not one of their better efforts.
Jeff Bridges stars as Jeff Lebowski, aka The Dude, Duder, or, if you're not into the brevity thing, El Duderino. He's a pretty simple L.A. guy with a pretty simple life: he's unemployed, he smokes pot, and League Bowling is his first priority. He bowls with opinionated, borderline-psychotic Vietnam vet Walter (John Goodman) and dimwitted Donny (Steve Buscemi). But the Dude's simple life is complicated when two men burst into his apartment, dunk his head in the toilet, ask him to cough up a lot of money which he doesn't have, then urinate on his rug when he can't help them. It turns out that these men were looking for another Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston), this one a millionaire, and when The Dude goes to the other Lebowski's mansion to get his rug replaced, he is soon embroiled in a complex plot involving a kidnapping, a botched ransom exchange, a severed toe, a nymphomaniac porn starlet (Tara Reid), some neo-Nazis, a flaky New Age feminist (Julianne Moore), and malicious law enforcement officials.
THE BIG LEBOWSKI is certainly idiosyncratic, but there is a sense of strain about it. It's cluttered with contrived attempts to be original and offbeat: there's a man in an iron lung, a philosophizing character called The Stranger (Sam Elliot), an elaborate dream-sequence production number. By trying so hard, it comes across as forced; the Coens' vision is naturally skewed, and by pushing it they needlessly call attention to that fact.
There is a lot wrong with the movie, but since it's a comedy, the fundamental issue is this: is it funny? The humour is irreverent in the extreme: death, pornography, child abuse, and disabled people are treated purely as sources of humour. Some people in our PC 90s will doubtless object to this material on principle; my feeling is that if it's funny, it doesn't matter how offensive it is--when something's not funny, that's when I start to feel offended. Fortunately, THE BIG LEBOWSKI is very funny, and that is its saving grace. Bridges wins a lot of laughs as the hapless, laidback everyman thrown into an absurdist nightmare and unable to extricate himself; Goodman is wonderful as his headstrong best friend whose well-intentioned interference just makes matters worse and worse.
The other characters, however, exist only because they're funny, not because the script is particularly interested in them (most notably Julianne Moore's Maude), and the plot is a grab-bag of ideas, many of them inspired, but thrown together in a slapdash way. The movie lacks any sense of coherence, and while all the actors are great, several are wasted in minor roles: John Turturro has fun with a manically over-the-top character, stealing his scenes, but David Thewlis and Jon Polito have only walk-on parts, mildly amusing but unnecessary, while Buscemi is woefully underused. The dialogue is refreshing because it allows the characters to talk in a roundabout, unhurried, verbose way, but frustrating because it takes them an awful long time to get to the point.
The Coen brothers have taken pride, through the years, in doing things their own distinctive way--they confound expectations--but here that strategy has backfired. For many people (myself included) FARGO signalled the Coens' arrival as filmmakers: they had fulfilled their potential, and their next movie was expected to be great. But it seems that they have deliberately set out to not make a great movie in THE BIG LEBOWSKI, confounding the critics once again. It is an extravagant entertainment, but shallow and ultimately pointless. Considered as a self-contained work, it is good; in the context of the Coens' career and their considerable talent, it is a disappointment.
A Review by David Dalgleish (March 6/98)
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