Doug Harris, president of the
Houston Film Critics Society, continues to thumb his nose at COVID-19 by
hanging on his balcony spirit-lifting banners emblazoned with quotes from
classic movies. And once again, I’ve been inspired by my favorite currently
sitting president to rummage through my hard drive to provide an appropriate accompaniment.
This time, it’s my original 1998 review of The
Big Lebowski. And remember: It’s, like, just my opinion, man.
And now for something completely
different: The Big Lebowski,
an outrageously funny and indescribably weird shaggy-dog comedy from Joel and
Ethan Coen, the moviemaking siblings who last enthralled us with the darkly
ironic absurdism of their Oscar-winning Fargo.
Not that the Coens have ventured too far afield from what they’ve
done in the past. The anything-goes inventiveness of their latest effort
recalls the high-velocity lunacy of their Raising Arizona. And the vaguely Raymond Chandleresque
pattern of their new movie’s plot reflects their obvious affection for fiction
of the hard-boiled school. (Blood Simple, their first movie, had its roots in
James M. Cain, while Miller’s Crossing, their affectingly melancholy drama
about lethally competitive gangsters, is a superior Dashiell Hammett pastiche.)
Even so, as The
Big Lebowski shambles along from one bizarre incident to the next,
with a randomness that is more apparent than real, the comedy seldom covers
familiar ground. Which is one of several good reasons why it’s so enjoyably
loopy.
Jeff Bridges, an actor whose subtle sense of timing serves him
equally well in dramatic and comedic roles, is extremely engaging as The Dude,
a chronically stoned layabout who seems forever lost in the 1970s. (The movie
is set during the early ‘90s, on the eve of the Gulf War, for reasons that the
Coen brothers feel no need to share with us.) The character’s real name is Jeff
Lebowski, which turns out to be a problem when two tough customers mistake him
for a bilious millionaire with the same name. The bad boys break into The Dude’s
comfortably seedy apartment and demand payment for debts incurred by the wife
of Jeffrey Lebowski. When The Dude insists that he has neither a wife nor a
disposable income, one of the thugs urinates on his rug.
Under normal circumstances, such rude behavior would be easily
forgotten, if not forgiven, by The Dude. But the rug meant a lot to him — “It
really tied the room together!” — and he’s determined to make someone pay
for a replacement. So he somehow manages to locate the palatial home of the
more upscale Jeff Lebowski (David Huddleston). Not surprisingly, the millionaire
gives The Dude the bum’s rush. Very surprisingly, the millionaire later summons
The Dude back to his mansion, to seek our hero’s help in retrieving his trophy
wife, Bunny Lebowski (Tara Reid), from kidnappers.
The Dude is singularly ill-suited for the role of private
detective. Indeed, if he had his way, he would simply continue to concentrate
on his favorite pastimes: smoking, drinking and, along with a few buddies,
bowling. In this, he is very much like the Coen brothers themselves, who regard
their ridiculously complex storyline merely as an excuse to place The Dude in
the orbit of various oddballs and evil-doers. To say that The Big
Lebowski rambles would be to give it more credit for momentum than
it deserves. Even so, despite a final quarter-hour that is unduly protracted
and, worse, insufficiently inspired, the movie is very amusing in its
what-the-hell pointlessness, and often hilarious in its contrast between the
blissed-out Dude and the desperate characters he encounters.
As Walter Sobchak, the hot-tempered Vietnam vet who is the Dude’s
best friend and bowling partner, John Goodman offers furious comic bluster as a
sharp counterpoint to Bridges’ foggy-headed nonchalance. Julianne Moore plays
the movie’s most rational and tightly-focused character, Maude Lebowski, the
millionaire’s sardonic daughter, who has her own plans for taking advantage of
the Dude’s obliviousness. The extremely eclectic supporting cast includes such
notables as Ben Gazzara as a well-to-do producer of cheesy porno movies; John
Turturro as a flashy bowler with a checkered past as a sex offender; Jon Polito
as a shamus who optimistically assumes that The Dude must be smarter than he
looks; and, during one of the film’s clever but overly extended fantasy
sequences, Jerry Haleva as Saddam Hussein.
In the world according to the Coen brothers, the Iraqi leader
doesn't appear at all incongruous as he stands behind a counter and rents
bowling shoes to his customers. Sam Elliott also drops by from time to time as
The Stranger, a drawling cowpoke who serves as narrator, adviser and overall
master of ceremonies. He, too, seems right at home.
BTW: The Big Lebowski inspired such a
humongous cult that somebody made a movie about that cult. Here is my Variety
review of the 2009 documentary The
Achievers: The Story of The Lebowski Fans.
at 7 p.m. Friday at MFA. As I noted in 
and 
how to snatch a moral victory from the immoral overlords of The Establishment. Tucker is at heart an ode to American ingenuity, displaying a patriotism more unabashedly exhilarating than all the flag-waving at a dozen political conventions."
(with their 
star Jeff Bridges) and their Oscar-nominated 
(due on homevideo next week) in