The Big Lebowski (1998)

This movie has a big personality, and I could have given it a 10, but I felt that a 9 was more appropriate. This is basically a post-modern tale that anyone growing up in the 90's will understand. Everyone should find this entertaining, especially on re-runs on all the networks. It requires attention span as the story is rather complicated. It also has a great number of characters to introduce. But the filmmakers do it so well that it doesn't lose any points. I didn't give it a 10 because it is so outlandish and over-the-top that even the most gullible will want to walk away from it at times. There is a character, played by John Turturro, who is a registered sex offender, who plays bowling alongside the three main characters in league bowling, and they felt the need to do a cut-scene to tell his story, even though he is only in one scene. Also, there is the guy who is a stage actor, who wants the Dude to go to his performance, and the dude nearly forgets - this character has nothing at all to do with this movie, so the scenes changed about every 2 minutes!!! Also, John Goodman's character getting away with threatening to shoot someone in public, and the cops show up and somehow miss him!! Way too over-the-top. It felt at times like a pornographic display of garishness.

To make long story short, I don't understand what really matters in this film. The plot is rather simple, a lazy jobless middle-aged man living in Los Angels gets in trouble only because his name is identical to the another man who looks a millionaire but in fact lives by the money of the foundation that he represents. The plot may become interesting if the main characters have more concrete biography and have a will to live their life in such so that it would become better than the total wasting of time. But what the authors made of the plot is the contrary. No one of the characters has a will to live otherwise, that is, they want to live only as lazy dogs with no positive or creative purpose. Their sense of justice and sense of duty is lower than average , their desire to have a lot of money without working is not motivated by any thought-out view of the world, and as a result they look very flat and boring people. Here the simple plot is played by very boring people and authors' effort to make simple boring story look interesting resulted in an empty demonstration of cheep and disconnected images (visions of daydreams of the main character). Sorry, but I feel no sympathy for dose lazy and healthy guys only playing but not living.

Watching this film I got a very strong sense that the Coen brothers created a character and then everyone involved in the film found themselves falling in love with him. There's so much absurdity in this film, but at it's heart is a character whose realness (in the sense of "keeping it real") grounds it all. So many things test the Dude's commitment to his own personal ethic and, in what is essentially a romp, the challenge to his moral compass creates layers one can't imagine from a synopsis of the film.And it's all perfectly executed: Jeff Bridges is fantastic, John Goodman simultaneously aggravating and charming, the dialogue so snappy and the one liners so quotable. Then there's the sort of soundtrack that filmmakers can assemble when they're at the top of their game and direction that doesn't intrude, except when it wants to.I hadn't seen this film for years, but there's so much going on I'm sure I could watch it again in a week and not be bored.

This movie really ties the room together.The most classic neo noir comedy caper of all time, blending old school Hollywood schlock with hippie revivalism and art house pretension funk. This is really the coolest film ever made in the modern ages. Has there ever been a more chilled out protagonist/anti-hero than the Dude? Sam Elliot narrating? Donnie, you are certainly out of your element in trying to understand how perfect this film is.