# Big Lebowski, The (1998)

### reviewed by
Brandon Stahl

You're inside bowling ball, rolling down the lane. Up and down, up and down, not sure why you're there. The only thing you are sure about is you're on a drug trip. What happens when you hit the pins?

"The Big Lebowski" for all intents and purposes, is an insane movie. It's filled with a laundry list of weird and discpicable characters, has an even longer line of plot twists, and just for fun, a couple of dream sequences (or drug trips, however you'd like to call them) are thrown in. At the end of the film you realize that you're left with memorable scenes, but not a memorable movie.

At the center of "The Big Lebowski" is " the Dude" or Jeff Lawbowski, the "laziest man in the world" played by Jeff Daniels. The movie opens with this description of him: "Sometimes there is man, and he's a man for his time and place. And that's the dude." And that man has no job, but has an unlimited supply of drinks and drugs and enough left over to pay rent on a nice aparment. He writes checks for $0.79 and he bowls. His only identifiction is a Ralph's grocery card.

    The Dude.

I've always enjoyed the Coen's films because they are, if nothing else, original and inventive. Here, they've tried so hard to be original that they've created a lot of ideas, but not much of a movie to hold them together. The plot moves along like an episode of Seinfeld on crack. It goes something like this: The Dude is mistaken as another Lewbowski (played by Charles Durning) by two thugs who want money.

To show that they mean business, the thugs urinate on the Dude's rug (which, as he says, "just held the room together). The Dude wants a new rug from the other Lebowski, who is paralyzed, happens to be a wealthy tycoon. Said Tycoon tells him no, but later summons him back to his mansion so the Dude can help him recover his kidnapped daughter (because he thinks that the same men who kidnapped his daugther also urinated on the Dude's rug), the Dude agrees, but lets his insane bowling partner help him out. The bowling partner (played by John Goodman) screws up the plan and instead of trading money for the daugther, the partner just gives the kidnappers his dirty underwear.

That's just the first 30 minutes. On second thought, it's more like a soap opera on crack. You never guess where you're going next, but then, you don't really care. Did I like "The Big Lebowski"? No. But that doesn't mean others won't. It has the right kind of humor and story to develop a cult following (like most Coen movies) but this one didn't entertain me. Maybe I was looking for more of a story rather that two hours of characters that are in serious need of a psychiatrist.

"The Big Lebowski" (** and a half out of four stars) A movie written, produced and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Starring Jeff Daniels, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, and Peter Huddleston

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