Coen brothers serve up huge disappointment

By Ian Blecher

COURTESY WORKING TITLE FILMS

It all begins when ex-hippie Jeff Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), who calls himself "The Dude," returns to his tenement to find two thugs who mistake him for millionaire Jeff "The Big" Lebowski. In what will become his typical Easy Rider style, The Dude manages to clear up this embarrassing faux pas, though not before he drinks a considerable amount of toilet water and a gangster soils his rug.

Determined to replace the rug, which "really tied the room together," The Dude pursues the Big Lebowski, a crotchety old fatso (David Huddleston). Despite his FDR wheelchair and glasses, the Big Guy isn't interested in hearing The Dude's incoherent testimonial. But the visit does last long enough for our hero to finagle a Persian carpet from The Big Lebowski's Ivy League assistant, Brandt (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and to reluctantly turn down an offer for oral sex from Lebowski's Lolitine wife, Bunny (Tara Reid).

As the plot slows down, the Coens reach into their three-ring circus-full of oddities to find Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) and Donny (Steve Buscemi). Walter is a downhome psychopath, crew-cut and corpulent, obsessed with a Beckettian bowling tournament, the Vietnam War, and his ex-wife. In perhaps the fastest, least subtle bit of character development in American film history, he pulls a gun on an unfortunate opponent in his first scene. Throughout the film, Donny does his best to pry into conversations, but The Dude never talks to him and Walter only says "shut up." Together, this perverse triumvirate tackles the dastardly plot spread out before them.

One afternoon, The Dude gets a call from the Big Lebowski that Bunny has been kidnapped, perhaps by the same ruffians who mistook The Dude's rug for a toilet. Lebowski promises him $20,000 if he will drop off the ransom money that night, and find his beloved Bunny.

True to the pedigree of Three Stooges spin-offs, things go awry. Walter figures they can make a lot more than $20,000 if they keep the ransom for themselves and instead throw the kidnappers his underwear-filled brief-case. The Dude's reservations don't forestall Walter's mischief, and the good guys end up with a million-dollar briefcase and no girl. It's as close to a happy ending as the movie gets; unfortunately, there's plenty more to go. Walter wants to go bowling, so they lock the briefcase in the car and get suited up. Soon enough, the car's gone, and Bunny's toe ends up in the mail.

Events ensue. We meet Jesus (exquisitely played by John Turturro), a macho Latin bowler; Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore), The Big's disaffected-artist/nymphomaniac daughter; Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazarra), a pornographer and "friend" of Bunny's; and three absurdly perfect German nihilists (one of whom is Flea), who figure as a sort of inversion of The Dude and company. They're un-American, evil, and not at all laid back. As they're happy to repeat, they "believe in nothing." Unfortunately for an expectant audience, the director seems to agree with them.

The Coens manage to pile on a gaggle of swell folks, and squeeze a bunch of surprises into the storyline. In the end, though, the film has more in common with the Naked Gun movies (even 33 & 1/3) than with earlier triumphs like Raising Arizona and Barton Fink. The Big Lebowski retains all the screwball sensibility that made the brothers famous and won them an Oscar, without any trace of humanity or pathos.

Near the film's conclusion, Donny dies of a heart attack, and there's not a wet eye in the house. His funeral is fodder for yet more slap-stick comedy; I cried more when they put Nixon to rest. Walter makes a ridiculous, self-absorbed, ravenously inarticulate speech, and The Dude can only bicker with him about it. By this time, we think, anything can happen. Walter could become a professional masseur. The Dude could sign a three-album deal with Death Row Records. When it's over, so many people have double-crossed so many other people that it's difficult to discern a coherent course of events.

The Big Lebowski turns out to be a lot like a Cadillac. Big, a lot of fun, and American as hell. But anyone with a conscience will see it for its decadent, arbitrary, gas-guzzling, self-affirming cinematic freedom, divested of most self-restraint. I think I'll stick to my Volkswagen.

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• The official site for 'The Big Lebowski'

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