The dude.

Right well here is another post, this time its another flick, and I've chosen another comedy, The Big Lebowski, which must rank as one of my favourite films, and one of my favourite Cohen brother films.

So to start with as usual, here is a but about the plot, which begins with the main character, Jeffrey Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), who is better known as "The Dude", being assaulted by two thugs who are looking for some money.  However the thugs have got the wrong man, as it soon turns out that they were looking for another Lebowski, who is a millionaire, who's wife Bunny owes money to a man called Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara).  On realising their mistake, they leave, but not before one of them takes a pee on the Dude's rug.  After this the dude decides to go and approach Lebowski (David Huddleston), the millionaire who is wheelchair bound, to get some compensation for his rug, but Lebowski turns him down, however on his way out, the dude tells Lebowski's associate, Brandt (Philip Seymour Hoffman) that he was to take any rug he wanted.  Soon after however, the dude is visited by some people, one of who knocks him out, and after he comes round, he sees that his rug has been taken.  Further complications arise when Lebowski contacts the Dude, who tells him that his young trophy wife, Bunny (Tara Reid), has been kidnapped, and he wants the Dude to help get her back, as the kidnappers have sent a letter demanding money.

So the Dude along with his bowling buddie, Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) a hot headed Vietnam veteran,  go along to make a pay off, with a case full of money to the kidnappers, however Walter decides to get involved and changes the case of money with a "ringer", which is filled with his old undies!  After this, the kidnappers, who are three German nihilists (lead by Peter Stormare) get angry and pay the Dude a visit, while he is at home in his bath, they let a marmot off the leish and throw him into his bath, and they demand their money or they will "cut off his johnson!".  Meanwhile the Dude also gets a call from a woman, Maude (Julianne Moore) who turns out to be the daughter of Lebowski, and that she was the one who took the Dude's rug, which which actually belonged to her and was of sentimental value, and asks that the Dude recover the ransom.  Maude also reveals that Bunny was in actual fact a porn film star and plays a low rent porn film for him showing this, and that the three nihilists were her friends, the leader being Tortsen Voges (Stormare), who also appeared in the film.  The Dude is soon taken to meet Jackie Treehorn, a pornographer and loan shark, who wants to know where Bunny is and his money.  The Dude then tells Jackie that the kid, Larry Sellers, who allegedly stole the Dude's car, has his money, but Jackie doesn't believe him and drugs the Dude's drink, who soon passes out, and comes to in a police car, where he is taken to the police chief of Malibu, who warns him to not come back.  After the Dude get's back home, he finds his home ransacked, and Maude stands over him, naked, and after a bit of coital action, the Dude soon works out what has been going with Bunny as he suspects that Bunny actually faked her kidnapping and basically she was looking to extort money from her husband, the Big Lebowski, by using nihilist friends.  After that the Dude decides to go with Walter to pay the Big Lebowski a visit and confront him about the whole darn thing.     

The Big Lebowski is without a doubt one of my favourite comedies, and it remains the funniest of the Cohen brother's films.  The Cohen brothers, Joel and Ethan, have been no stranger to comedy, and very strange, quirky comedy at that, but with The Big Lebowski, it seems like they finally got the perfect combination of all those quirky traits together.  And the Cohen brothers are great at drawing out amusing characters and bringing them to life for an audience.

Performance wise the film is also great, with Jeff Bridges playing one of his best roles, as the Dude, who is basically just normal average guy, who is a lazy down and out, who hangs around and likes to smoke grass, drink White Russian cocktails and go bowling.  And Bridges plays him in quite a cool laidback way and succeeds in actually making him likeable, and while he is no hero, or that much of a detective, you get that he is bright enough to work things out as they go along.  Bridges also get's one of the film's best lines when he grabbed roughly by the big Lebowski's limo driver, while he still holds his drink in his hands "Careful, man, there's a beveridge here!".

John Goodman is also terrific as Walter, the half crazed, hot headed, Vietnam veteran, who is so confident in his opinions, but half the time he is wrong, especially when he thinks that the big Lebowski can actually walk at the end (which we soon find out he can't when Walter drops him out of his wheelchair!).  Goodman also get's pretty much the best lines of the film, and my favourite scene in the whole movie is where he interrogates a kid, Larry Sellers, who they think stole the money and the Dude's car, and he says to him "Have you ever heard of Vietnam, Larry??? You're enterting a world of pain, son!  You're killing your father, Larry!".  After this he proceeds to go out and smash up a fancy sports car, which he assumes belongs to Larry, which actually belongs to a next door neighbour, ranting at Larry "this is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!!".

The other cast members are also really good, particularly Julianne Moore as Maude, the cool tempered feminist, who asks the Dude to help get the ransom money back, and later on has sex with him, in order to help her conceive a baby (purely for her own reasons, but not to ask the Dude to be a father to the baby).  Steve Buscemi is also priceless, as the Dude and Walter's less than bright bowling buddie, Donny, who keeps wandering in on the middle of the Dude's conversations, and is often the butt of Walter's cruel put downs, and the often used line "shut the fuck up, Donny!".  I also loved the scene with Donny when he hears Walter and The Dude mention something that the Russian revolutionary Lenin once said, but Donny mistakes it to be John Lennon and he says "I am the Walrus?".

David Huddleston is very good as the title character, the Big Lebowski, the tetchy millionaire, who is wheelbound and insists that the Dude go and get his wife back, although as the film progresses it appears that he doesn't really want his wife back, and he just used the Dude in his own ploy.  And Peter Stormare is funny as the nihilist, Voges, who threatens to cut off the Dude's johnson (or chonson as the script says!), and its a far cry from his chilling portrayal of Grimsrud from Fargo, and in the end Voges is actually just a coward, which Walter later proves by kicking his ass.  John Turturro, occassional regular in Cohen brother films, is also really good as Jesus, the egomaniac bowler, and paedophile, who delivers one of the best lines which he says to Walter about pulling his gun at the bowling alley "If you do that to me, I will take that gun from you and shove it up your ass and pull the trigger to it goes click!".  And finally Sam Elliott as the film's narrator does a fine job, with his deep Southern voice, providing the perfect voice over for the movie, and appears briefly in the middle and at the end of the film.

The film also has a good soundtrack, and while I'm not a fan of Bob Dylan, they use his song "The Man in Me" very well (even though I'm not a fan of the song either!) over the title sequence.  And other songs are well used, particularly Creedence's "Looking out my back door" and "Running through the Jungle".  And one of my favourite tracks used in the film is Kenny Rogers "Just dropped in", which is again well used in the Dude's dream sequence, as he plays the lead part in a film "Gutterballs!".  Great name.  Although if the film does have any flaws then it is in the dream sequences, which are pretty daft, with the Dude dreaming of being a star in the film Gutterballs, and also flying on his magic rug through the skies at night, but these are minor niggles.  

So overall for me the Big Lebowski is a great laugh, it might not be for everyone and it was a commercial failure when first released, and for me it took a second viewing for it to grow on me, but when it did, its remained one of my favourite comedies and films from the 1990s.  The performances are all great, as they usually are in any Cohen brothers film, and if you haven't seen it yet, then the BL is one to watch.

And that is that!  Till next time, take her easy, dude.