The Big Lebowski (1998) Review
THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
It’s really funny when you don’t try so hard and your life can take some crazy turns. If you don’t think that’s possible. Look at The Big Lebowski. PLOT Narrated by Sam Elliot as an unnamed stranger, the 1998 film follows Jeffrey Lebowski who insists on being called ‘The Dude’. With his music career gone south that makes him tight for cash, he lives off residuals and is now a complete slacker. When not smoking weed and drinking White Russians regularly, he loves to bowl with his friends Walter Sobchak and Theodore Donald Karabotsos, who they are all preparing for an upcoming tournament. One night after picking up some milk, he is attacked by two men who mistake him to be a millionaire of the same name. They confront Lebowski because his doppelgänger’s trophy wife Bunny owes money to porn kingpin Jackie Treehorn and after trespassing does one of them go out of line by peeing on his rug. Once the Dude later explains to Walter what happened and discovers who he was mistaken with, he meets the man who is wheelchair bound after losing the ability to walk during the Korean War. After already explaining what happened to him and his assistant Brandt, he refuses to compensate the Dude for a new rug. Defiantly, Dude chooses to take one from his house until it gets taken from him at night by the big Lebowski’s daughter Maude. He is then called by the latter to tell him Bunny just got kidnapped by three men for a million dollar ransom and asks him to do the handoff which he’ll be compensated for with $20,000. Walter joins him in the handoff but because he thinks Bunny staged the abduction, he fakes the drop by leaving a case of his dirty underwear and jumping out of Dude’s car with an uzi that causes him to crash. The kidnappers take the underwear case and flee via motorcycle. Walter still thinks it’s a ruse when going bowling as if nothing happened, but consequences are proven to be real when the Dude’s car gets stolen. After he reports the car being stolen, he meets Maude who is a feminine conceptual artist. She explains she took the rug from him because it belonged to her late mother who gave her sole inheritance that her father has no access to. With Jeffrey recently stealing from the family’s charity organization, The Little Lebowski Urban Achievers, she is sure Bunny’s kidnapping is fake when showing him a Treehorn produced porno Bunny starred in alongside Uli aka Karl Hungus, who he saw at the house the same day Dude met the big Lebowski. Maude asks Dude to recover the money instead of going to the police and in return, she’ll give him $100,000 compensation that’ll allow him to buy any rug he wants. The Dude would still believe it all to be real when not only does Jeffrey show that her foot was severed and Uli mailed it to him for what happened at the handoff, but Uli invades his home with his accomplices, Franz & Kieffer. They drop a marmot onto him while bathing and threaten to castrate him if they don’t get the money soon. Walter still doesn’t believe it’s real because he suggests it could be someone else’s toe. When the Dude checks in with Maude and tells her what happened, she identifies them to be Uli’s bandmates of Autobahn. Around the time the Dude takes a recommended medical exam and the police find his car back vandalized that doesn’t have the case full of money, he goes out for a drive, and suspects someone in a blue car to follow him that he gets so distracted he crashes. Once the other car is no longer behind him, he finds a graded homework assignment on his seat that belongs to a teenage boy named Larry Sellers (Jesse Flanagan), confirming he took the car. Walter does a background check to find out where he lives and it turns out his father, Arthur Digby Sellers, was the lead writer of the acclaimed series, Branded, and is now bound to a breathing apparatus due to health problems. (With Donnie tagging along) The Dude and Walter go to Larry’s home to ask where’s the case, but he chooses to be silent. Walter chooses to take out his anger on a brand new car outside the house assuming it’s Larry’s, only to find out it belonged to a neighbor who just bought it a week prior and he retaliates by attacking Dude’s car assuming it belonged to Walter. When the trio of friends drive away defeated despite enjoying food from In N Out Burger, Treehorn’s thugs take Dude to Treehorn himself who demands to know where Bunny is, not believing in the kidnapping either, offering his own compensation if he tells her where she and the money are. When the Dude tells him Larry has the money and Bunny’s kidnapping is a ruse, Treehorn spikes his drink and it results in him getting so intoxicated that he gets arrested in Malibu for wandering intoxicated. He even gets beaten up by the chief of police (Leon Russom) who openly dislikes him to begin with and gets kicked out of a taxi cab when the driver gets offended of him not liking his choice of music. When the Dude returns home again finding it vandalized, Maude appears and has sex with him, wanting him to conceive her child hence recommending the medical exam. When he tells her what happened with Treehorn and Larry, she explains her dad doesn’t have any money of his own and he is dependent on her allowance. Realizing this, Dude calls Walter to pick him up. When waiting for him outside, he sees the same car that followed him and confronts the driver who turns out is a private investigator named Da Fino (Jon Folito) looking for Bunny on behalf of her family, the Knudsens, who she ran away from a year prior. Once Walter shows up, Dude does tell him he is living in the past by choosing to still practice Jewish religion after divorcing his wife and constantly comparing everything to his experience in the Vietnam War. He also explains to him that the big Lebowski used the kidnapping as an excuse to steal the charity money and was never really gonna pay anyone, suggesting the case was empty the whole time. When reaching the big Lebowski’s residence, they see Bunny has returned home because she told no one she was going to Palm Springs with some friends and has all toes intact. The Dude confronts his accusations to her husband and as he denies it, Walter gets so suspicious that he suspects him to fake his paralysis and tries pulling him off his wheelchair, only to find out it’s the one thing he wasn’t lying about. After putting him back in the chair and resume bowling with Donnie, bowling rival Jesus Quintana gets livid that Walter demanded the tournament game to be rescheduled out of respect to his practice of Shabbos. By the time they later head out, Autobahn returns, revealing they cut off their girlfriend’s toe, torches the Dude’s car and still demands the ransom. Once Dude explains there was no money, Uli compromises to whatever cash they have on them. Dude and Donnie are willing to accept it, but Walter refuses and ultimately beats up all three nihilists on his own. Surprisingly, Donnie would die of a heart attack during the commotion. With a standard urn too expensive for either friend to afford, they compromise in scattering his ashes with a Folgers coffee can from Ralph’s. The eulogy goes horrible as well because not only did the wind redirect some of the ashes to Dude’s face, but Walter referenced Vietnam throughout which the former immediately calls him out on. As they share an emotional hug, they go back to their lives and continue bowling to prepare for the tournament. The film ends with the Stranger admitting he still feels inspired by the Dude after all that’s happened, also revealing that Maude is pregnant with a little Lebowski on the way. THOUGHTS The Coens weren’t unfamiliar with comedies by the end of 90s, but nothing can ever top the greatness of The Big Lebowski for how consistent it all is and feels so ageless to me right now. With Roger Deakins on board to craft excellent cinematography as always, it appropriately creates a noir vibe that becomes all the more compelling. Because of said atmosphere, it ends up leaving you surrounded with quite the handful of colorful characters whether they’re likable or not. One of the best examples is going to be Quintana because while you shouldn’t like this character for being a sex offender, John Turturro makes him memorable for being so eccentric while arrogant which I guess is enough for him to have a supposed spinoff. I also get some chuckles with how great of a suck up Philip Seymour Hoffman makes out of Brandt. That fake ass smile kills me every-time. Heck, even the Autobahn trio played by Peter Stormare, Flea & Torsten Voges are hilarious due to how stupid they really are in trying to embrace cold hearted nihilism and fail miserably. And throughout, it is not everyday you see a slacker get involved in an unconventional whodunnit mystery, have a marmot thrown onto you during a bath, be jumped by a chief of police for being a deadbeat and unknowingly be a choice of a surrogate father. Jeff Bridges had been acting since the 60s, yet the role of The Dude has grown to be his best because it is in his perspective where we get reminded how important it is to never take life too seriously. While you can’t always control the chaos that comes your way, staying true to yourself matters most when those time passes. ‘The Dude Abides’ hits me effectively because it reflects exactly how it can feel a little easier to go with the flow rather than keep complaining after every inconvenience and that’s why the stranger is so intrigued of him when it’s all over. Is the Dude lazy? Yes, yet compared to all the greed and manipulation David Huddleston brings as his titular counterpart, or how there’s suave hedonism you pick up on from the minimum time of Ben Gazzara as Jackie Treehorn, the Dude’s still a decent person which is proven when actually going out of his way to attend his landlord’s play and feels sad over the sudden death of Donnie as he felt part to blame. It’s a moment full of laughter and shock for how sudden it was, yet still sad since Steve Buscemi depicts him to be the most innocent due to being mostly oblivious from what Walter & the Dude go through. The fact they go out of their way to scatter their ashes proves they were the only family he had vice versa, which says a lot to how much they care even when it seemed that they didn’t, especially with Walter. Enter John Goodman who turn gives an all timer performance of a PTSD veteran that is a living embodiment of a wild card. He definitely makes things worse when picking on Donnie like a tick, being so volatile to the point of being a ticking time bomb, lets his paranoia get the best of him by pulling a disabled man from his wheelchair with no legit proof of him faking it, and being obsessed with rules overall, it’s his way to express what he identifies as loyalty to his friends even when they don’t always see it that way. To this day, I will laugh the most with him trashing a fancy car that ends up being the wrong target. I always lose a breath laughing too hard when it came to hearing the glass break on the brake lights because it almost sounded like he was gonna fall. And shoutout to Luis Colina putting his heart and soul into the reasonable anger unleashed as Larry’s neighbor when he tries retaliating. Putting that aside, I’m sure he can abide as much as the Dude when it’s all said and done. Last but not least, it makes a lot of sense the Dude would find an unlikely companion that would use him for reasons that felt more right than wrong. Julianne Moore was a delight as Maude because unlike how Tara Reid depicts Bunny as one who avoids her problems, she still deals with it pragmatically and is upfront with how detached she can be with others while coming off free spirited. She never lied to the Dude the way her dad did, thus makes her near out of the wrong. Did she see the Dude as a means to an end? Yes, but she’s the only one to make it clear it wasn’t personal and I’m sure she’ll raise a good kid without his involvement as she wishes. This movie will always rock, but there are so many things that haven’t made sense upon the many times I’ve rewatched. Like I laugh at the thugs not knowing what a bowling ball is, but it’s totally on Treehorn not double checking the addresses instead of theirs. The big Lebowski may be right that only Dude can solve his own problems, but he’s definitely over-ignorant not realizing he’s trying to do that for one and done compensation. Also, Walter’s a big ass hypocrite to call out Smokey of stepping over the line when he showed up late. And if Smokey reported the gun incident, it’s a miracle how Walter never had any repercussions throughout the whole runtime that plays out. Like he shouldn’t be back at the bowling alley if he was reported especially when other teams like Jesus all know about it. Off of that, Dude should’ve not brought Walter to the handoff. Donnie would’ve been a way better substitute in comparison. The same can be said with driving to the big Lebowski. If Donnie doesn’t have a car, that should be implied. It’s then dumber for Walter to tell Arthur’s caretaker Pilar that he’s not a cop/detective and share his and Dude’s real names. I’m even surprised how Maude knew Dude was at the bowling alley. I don’t even think Da Fino makes any sense assuming Dude is a PI and admire his style when all that’s happened when following him is that he bowls. And personally, Dude should’ve just told Maude about his realization rather than confront her dad of it because it’s not like he’s gonna give him money at that point. If you can still ignore these things however, you can still identify The Big Lebowski as a comedy classic for making incompetence downright bonkers. If you prefer comedies that can give the right amount of rhythm of laughter, see this now.
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