♥♥♥♥♥♥
+ 2nd Best Movie of the Year
+ Best Comedy of the Year
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| Star Jeff Bridges with humorously spaced-out shades and a very funny tag-line adorn this poster for Ethan and Joel Coen's The Big Lebowski |
LA-residing stoner/bowling man, the unemployed Jeffrey 'The Dude' Lebowski gets involved in a kidnapping case through a case of mistaken identity (SPOILER and his own provocation that someone has pissed on his beloved carpet rug.) A really important bowling tournament is also coming up, so the timing for these problems is really just off. His good bowling pals help him out but also heavily convolute things.
The Big Lebowski may be one of the funniest comedies ever made, and it is certainly on my Top 3 of favorite movie by Minnesotan master filmmaker, brothers co-writer/producer Ethan and co-writer/director Joel Coen (Barton Fink (1991)). It is their 7th feature.
The film is narrated by a mysterious cowboy character (Sam Elliott (The Legacy (1978))), and its LA-set subculture crime plot is fashioned over the legacy of Raymond Chandler's noir structure of detective novels. Joel Coen has said eloquently about the point: "We wanted to do a Chandler kind of story – how it moves episodically, and deals with the characters trying to unravel a mystery, as well as having a hopelessly complex plot that's ultimately unimportant." This turned out to be an ingenious decision for the best stoner comedy of all time, The Big Lebowski.
Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart (2009)) is The Dude, a role he was lucky to get and which more than any other defined his career since. Each of the supporting actors are also great in each their own way as well: John Goodman (The Artist (2011)) is hysterical as a gun-crazed Vietnam veteran (inspired on John Milius!), and Julianne Moore (The Hours (2002)) shines as a presumptuous feminist performance artist. All the characters and dialog are totally outrageous and hysterically funny. The film works as contemporary satire and a developing crime/stoner comedy at the same time.
The music of Lebowski is awesome, as arranged by 'music archivist' Carter Burwell (The Rookie (2002)), its dream and drug-fueled sequences are extravagant, stylish and fantastic, and the film's ending is so tar-black in its humor, - it's just plain killer!
The movie has understandably inspired considerable cult, (mostly, I suppose, in the ever-existing stoner stratum of society), and even a 'religion' called Dudeism.
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Unbroken (2014) - Despite good elements, Jolie's Grand WWII Biopic is mostly distant and weak (co-writers)
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Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 46.9 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 3.12 times its cost)
[The Big Lebowski premiered 18 January (Sundance Film Festival) and runs 117 minutes. Shooting took place from January - April 1997 in California, including in Los Angeles. The film opened #6 to a 5.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America, its peak position there, where it grossed 17.4 mil. $ (37.1 % of the total gross). The film continues to add to its gross through re-releases. It was nominated for a European Film award, among other honors. Roger Ebert originally gave it a 3/4 star review but since changed it to a 4/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. IMDb's users have rated the film in at #203 on the site's Top 250 list, sitting between How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and Monsters, Inc. (2001). Ethan and Joel Coen returned with O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Bridges returned in Arlington Road (1999); Goodman in The Blues Brothers 2000 (1998); Moore in Welcome to Hollywood (1998); Steve Buscemi (Big Fish (2003)) in The Drew Carey Show (1998, TV-series)) and theatrically in The Wedding Singer (1998); and John Turturro (Transformers (2007)) in Animals with the Tollkeeper (1998)). The Big Lebowski is certified fresh at 83 % with a 7.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Big Lebowski?
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