‘Big Lebowski’ crazy but fun film

THE VIPER

JOHN GOODMAN and Jeff Bridges in “The Big Lebowski.”

I saw it when it came out, but I must not have appreciated it.
That was a full decade ago.
“The Big Lebowski” is a product of those crazy Cowen brothers, best known these days for “No Country For Old Men” and great classics like “Fargo” and “Raising Arizona.”
No less grand is “The Big Lebowski,” written by brothers Ethan and Joel Coen and directed by Joel Coen.
The picture opens with a tumbleweed blowing across the screen. Maybe it symbolizes the vast wasteland that is this picture. It’s highly entertaining, but the characters are so shallow.
This is a film about nothing and about everything.
Lebowski, who calls himself the Dude,” hangs with his friends, bowls nightly but doesn’t work. It’s a great part for Jeff Bridges.
He likes to drink, especially alcoholic beverages with milk.
The film opens with him staggering into a grocery store in his bathrobe and flip flops, opening a carton of milk and sniffing the inside. He decides to buy the milk and scrawls out a check for 69 cents to give to the bored cashier.
Welcome to Lebowski’s weird, skewed world.
He returns home to find two thugs in his home demanding money, stating wife Bunny is good for it.
But the Dude has no wife. Plus the wife says Lebowski is rich. Looks like a case of mistaken identity. But before the crooks realize their mistake, one stuffs Lebowski’s head in the toilet. The other urinates on his rug, the beloved rug that went so well with his fleabag home.
Much of the plot is furthered at the bowling alley, where the Bridges character talks things over with his pals Walter Sobchak, a Vietnam veteran with some bizarre opinions, played hilariously by John Goodman; and Donny Kerabatsos, the sort of Larry Fine of the group, played by Steve Buscemi. Steve Buscemi, need I say more?
The actors must have had a great time in this romp.
The Dude decides to visit the rich Lebowski, the one whose wife owes the money. He wants a replacement for his beloved rug.
In the meanwhile, he meets the rich Lebowksi’s nerdy but loyal aide, played with hilarious results by Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
The rich Lebowski, played by David Huddleston, is the clip-voiced, no nonsense millionaire who has no sympathy for the Dude.
“Did I matriculate on your rug?” the Huddleston character asks, before suggesting the Dude get a job.
In leaving, the Dude helps himself to a rug at the house, is escorted out by Hoffman and meets the money-owing Mrs. Lebowski, played by Tara Reid. The former porn star offers the Dude a sex act for $1,000.
Mrs. Lebowski is supposedly kidnapped and the Dude, for some reason, is asked to help deliver the ransom.
Somehow, the Dude becomes involved in all of the twists and turns, almost like a 1940s gumshoe movie. He’s hit on the head, meets beautiful women and must come up with the solution to the mystery.
All with generous visits to the bowling alley.
If you’ve never met the Lebowskis or it’s been awhile, it’s time to revisit this wacky bunch.
And while you are laughing, try not to pee on the carpet.

Big Lebowski
• 117 minutes
• Rated R for pervasive language, drug content, sexuality, brief violence
• 3 1/2 stars out of four
This appeared in Weekender Sept. 18, 2008 in the Ashtabula Star Beacon.