MOVIE REVIEW: THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)

This Coen brothers film developed a cult following shortly after its release.  Having heard the hype for years, it’s a wonder that it took me so long to get around to watching this film.  This film may serve as a warning to view hyped-up movies sooner rather than later.  For all that I heard about it over the years, the experience of watching it did not live up to the all the platitudes from its faithful admirers.

Jeff Bridges stars as Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowksi, a directionless spirit content to get by on minimal effort, a few choice drinks and drugs, and bowling with his friends.  When hired goons rough him up and mess with his stuff, The Dude finds himself caught up in the drama of another Jeffrey Lebowski’s personal mess.  The Dude just wants to set things straight, but the titular Big Lebowski pulls him in deeper, asking him to execute a ransom drop-off after his wife is kidnapped.  The leads The Dude further down a rabbit hole full of colorful characters and uncertain intentions.

Bridges does a very good job of keeping The Dude grounded in the character’s steady, understated, Zen-like mindset.  John Goodman is laudable for his supporting role as The Dude’s friend Walter, a borderline unhinged Vietnam veteran with a knack for seeing through the BS of others half the time and making situations worse the other half.  The rest of the characters are oddball exaggerations of the kinds of colorful personalities that fill in the background of life, except here there are so many oddballs running about that hardly a ‘normal’ person is to be found in this film.  Perhaps that’s just commentary on LA culture, or perhaps it’s just par for the course for a Coen brothers’ film.

While this film is entertaining in places, my overall takeaway is that it is a character piece without a meaningful story to tell.  Or perhaps, rather, the plot feels contrived and forced to avoid the film being all story (just narrative events).  The mystery of Bunny Lebowski’s kidnapping may draw The Dude and his friends deeper into the weirdness, but the resolution of it all is disappointing and lacks catharsis.  The stakes are never very high for The Dude until the very end.  Even then the Dude abides and life just goes on for him it seems.

If the point the Coen brothers are going for is to show that life (or at least LA) is full of weirdos and mysteries that go nowhere, then mission accomplished, but perhaps that could have been done in a short film rather than a two-hour feature-length format.  The Coens possess a lot of wit and a lot of style.  After several films garnering high acclaim, perhaps they overindulged in their strengths and created something akin to madcap frosting with an empty aftertaste.

I’m not going to tell people that they can’t love this movie, even if I didn’t find much to love about it in retrospect.  It’s an amusing thing to experience, but I don’t feel any urge to watch it again.  The Big Lebowski is among the better examples of style over substance out there, so feel free to go there if you wish.  In the end, as The Dude would say, this is all just, like, my opinion, man.

FINAL RATING: 3.5 out of 5