The Big Lebowski [1998]

The Big Lebowski, the Coen Brothers’ followup to their greatest masterpiece, Fargo, was a movie as markedly different from its predecessor as there can be – the kind of parallax shift they repeated later with No Country for Old Men and Burn after Reading. The movie can be considered a cornerstone for the kind of unapologetic irreverence and humour they have become legendary for. When Jeff Lebowski, perhaps the biggest slacker in the whole of Los Angeles, and who prefers to be called by the epithet “The Dude", is visited upon by a couple of thugs, one of whom relieves upon his rug, what ensues is a madcap comedy with a serpentine plot that is as skewed and hilarious as its utterly wacky characters. Jeff Bridges as the eponymous bum-cum-stoner, and John Goodman as his gleefully neurotic bowling buddy, headed a terrific support cast, including the likes of the histrionic tycoon David Huddleston, the comically unctuous Phillip Seymour Hoffman, the "vaginal" painter Julianne Moore, the exceedingly demure Steve Buscemi and the impossibly profane John Turturro, to provide a memorably idiosyncratic ride through mistaken identity, double crosses, embezzlement, kidnapping and the porn industry. Watch out for a surrealistic song-and-dance sequence on, know what, bowling!









Directors: Joel & Ethan Coen
Genre: Comedy/Crime Comedy/Buddy Film
Language: English
Country: US