Can't Shake that Dude
Bridges Breathes Life into Lebowski

The latest offering from the Coen brothers (Ethan and Joel, the same team who brought us the dark comedy Fargo) is difficult to sum up in a few words, or even in a single review. It's a movie about a kidnapping, betrayal, sex, drugs, pornography, and bowling. Yet, it's about none of these things. In its essence, The Big Lebowski is about a man whose rug gets soiled by an unsavory thug. It's about a single man, named the Dude.

Jeff Bridges brings a new side of his acting ability to the screen as the drifting entity known as Jeff Lebowski, or as he prefers: the Dude. The Dude is his own person, free of the responsibility of a career, a family, even a girlfriend. He pays for a 67 cent carton of Half-and-Half by writing a check. As the narrator (Sam Elliott in a cameo appearance as the Stranger) points out, the Dude isn't exactly a hero. He's just a man. A man for his time.

The Dude is mistaken for another Jeff Lebowski, a millionaire whose 19 year-old wife has run up some debts. After the Dude's path crosses the real Lebowski, he soon finds himself employed as a carrier for a ransom drop when the young wife is kidnapped. Unfortunately, the Dude's friend and bowling partner, Walter (John Goodman), messes up the drop in an effort to scam the million dollars from the would-be ransomer.

While the plot may seem hard to follow, the truth is -- despite a couple outrageous dream sequences -- the story is horribly simple. As with Fargo, however, I found myself more engrossed in the characters and their motivations than the actual story. To my disappointment, most of the characters were little more than caricatures who fluttered in and out of the movie.

Mixed into the story are a number of strange people, from the ex-porn star, Bunny, to the Nihilists (who "believe in nothing"). The Big Lebowski (David Huddleston), is a large capitalist in a wheelchair (reminiscent of Lionel Barrymore in It's A Wonderful Life). His daughter, Maude (Julianne Moore), is a sexually-driven artist. Then there's John Turturro as the bowlers' slimy adversary Jesus Quintana.

Bridges and Goodman stood out as the high points of the movie, playing their characters with an equal dose of energy and insanity. Bridges gives the Dude a carefree non-chalance heretofore unseen in his repertoire. He makes the character loveable as a type of anti-hero. Goodman's role as Walter is psychotic and violent, unwilling to let go of his past in Vietnam or his ex-wife. Steve Buscemi, a regular in Coen brothers movies, plays the third part of the bowling trio, a wimpy sidekick named Donny who routinely misses important parts of conversations and gets yelled at by his friends.

My only concern echoes that of Elliott's character, the Stranger. There's too much foul language, and I found that it detracted from the story. The profanity seemed to be used in an attempt at realism, but I found it overworked. More time should have been given to writing snappier dialogue, the kind that made Fargo both real and outrageous.

Fans of the Coens' work will understand what they are trying to achieve here. The experience, for all its big name actors and bizarre settings, is not so much a movie as a state of mind. It's about getting to know one man, the Dude, and walking around in his skin for awhile.

MY RATING: 6 out of 10.

RATED: R
RUN TIME: 113 min.