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Starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, et al. The Coen brothers are renowned for their screenplays involving off-beat, quirky, and three-dimensional characters. They take this to another level in The Big Lebowski, a movie that has the best collection of colorful characters that any film has ever had. Oh sure, there've been something other screenwriters and directors who have created stupifyingly realistic and/or entertaining charming characters, but never before have there been so many of these characters in just one place.The storyline in The Big Lebowski is wretched to comprehend and positively frightening to attempt to explain, but, nevertheless, warped and twisted in that manner that real life is so very prone to take. Jeff Bridges stars as "the Dude", an out-of-work pacifist, living in Los Angeles. The Dude comes home from bowling one day to be rudely, and mistakenly, attacked by two henchmen who were waiting for him to return to his apartment. The mistake comes with the realization that the henchmen were sent to meet another man with the Dude's Christian name, Jeffrey Lebowski. However, before the mix-up came to light, the Dude had his head slammed into a toilet, and one of the Dude's assailants pissed on his rug, the rug that "held the [living] room together". Upset that his rug has been defiled, the Dude pays a visit to the Jeffrey Lebowski that the henchmen really wanted to speak with, to request that he pay for a new carpet. From here, the Dude becomes involved in the search for Jeffrey Lebowski's kidnapped, porn-star wife, confronts German nihilists with an attack marmot, meets a self-proclaimed vaginal artist, Julianne Moore, who paints naked while being flown through the air while attached to rope rigging, uncovers embezzlement in an urban achiever league, has his car fire-bombed, stolen, vandalized, and beaten to hell with a crowbar, all the while worrying about how his bowling team, consisting of crazed Vietnam veteran John Goodman and the naive Steve Buscemi, will fare against the league's top bowler, Jesus, played by John Turturro, a pedophile who only dresses in purple, who has been accused of molesting eight year olds in his neighborhood. The Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, have been making slightly off-the-wall films since their 1985 debut, Blood Simple. Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, and Fargo all have been well-received by other critics, but try as I might, I just haven't been as overwhelmed by any aspect of the production as I was with The Big Lebowski. Their previous films, with the notable exception of The Hudsucker Proxy, have always been interesting and humorous to a degree, but they didn't begin to possess the same energy as The Big Lebowski. In The Big Lebowski, the characters were all characters-they were vibrant, balls of energy, bouncing around on-screen in the context of a decidedly goofy and rather amusing plot-and the acting, especially by Bridges and Goodman, was earth shakingly good. If Bridges doesn't garner the best actor statue for his stunning portrayal of the dude, it will be nothing more than an indictment of Hollywood's totally dysfunctional politics. Despite occasional lapses in the focus or realism of the screenplay, I found The Big Lebowski to be quite enjoyable to watch. There's no way to camouflage the fact that the plot changes directions more often than a drunken fraternity boy loping home from a rugby party, but just work with it. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the characters and style of life that the Coen brothers have put on screen. This is, hands down, my favorite Coen brothers film.
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