This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 1:15 am and is filed under Action/Comedy, B, Mob, Crime and Scam Movies, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Director: Joel Coen
Writers: Joel & Ethan Coen
Starring: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, Phillip Seymor Hoffman
Joel and Ethan Coen are the team that brought us, Raising Arizona, Fargo, the wildly underrated Hudsucker Proxy, and most recently, No Country for Old Men. To call their style of film making unique and quirky would be accurate but completely understates what they offer. If you are familiar at all with the Coen Brothers films, you know what to expect when you watch one: a group of characters that would have no earthly reason for spending time on the same planet except in a Coen brothers film, a story that is strung together with outrageous events and unlikely coincidences, dialogue that is unconventional but subtly brilliant and screen writing that is so perfectly masterful and uncliched that you swallow all of it without a second thought. As a Coen brothers film, The Big Lebowski doesn’t disappoint.
Jeff Bridges is Jeff Lebowski, a perpetually unemployed, washed up hippy and lifelong loser, who has abandoned his own name and calls himself “The Dude”. He has no money, no prospects and due to his everpresent “hey man take it easy” attitude, not a care in the world. He spends most days bowling with his equally driven and successful friends; Walter (played by John Goodman) a Vietnam vet with post traumatic stress syndrome, delusions of grandeur and anger manangement issues and Donnie (played by the always entertaining Steve Buscemi) the pathetic but likeable third wheel who seems to have accepted his role as the brunt of most of Walter’s anger. One Day a couple of thugs mistake “The Dude” for another Jeff Lebowski, except that Jeff Lebowski happens to be a millionaire with an out of control young trophy wife, and a habit of running up debts to the wrong people. After they feel that The Dude has sufficiently learned his lesson for having the same name as the guy they are really looking for, the less well mannered of the two thugs relieves himself on The Dude’s area rug, on the way out the door (now, that is just mean!). After spending some time, with the boys in the bowling ally, which apparently doubles as a think tank, The Dude decides that the real Jeff Lebowski should buy him a new rug since it was his wife that ran up the debt which ultimately led to the soiled rug. This starts a chain of events that only the Coen Brothers could dream up…well others might dream it up, but only the Coen Brothers could write a movie about it, get the money to make it, direct it and make us believe it.
This movie combines the absurd and the authentic with such finesse, that you have difficulty telling which is which. The characters are both funny and loathsome at once and the performances are top shelf across the board. The Coens seem to have an uncanny ability to put actors in what seem like ill-suited roles and yet they appear to be born to play it, regardless of the absurdity (watch for Flea from the Chili Peppers and the guy from the VW in the HIZZY commercials) . If you are a fan of these films, you have already seen this so I am wasting my time selling you. Plus, you probably own it and a back up disc. If you are not a fan of the Coens, either because you are not familliar with them, or because you happened to only catch the Hudsucker Proxy and couldn’t quite get your head around it (Hudsucker is like good scotch, an aquired taste), this might be the one that hooks you. Although, it does have its classic acid flashback Coen moments, it is not as far out of the normal spectrum as some of their other efforts. Fair warning though, it is not an accident that every Coen movie has a ridiculous cult following, the first taste is free.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:44 am
I’m not as big of a fan of this Coen effort as Carl. It’s a bit trippy for me, but there is some excellent, amusing dialog and some really interesting characters (The Dude is classic!). For those of you who are not sure if you like the Coen brothers, I would recommend Fargo or Blood Simple, as more mainstream starters.