If You Don't Know Where You're Going You Can Never Be Lost
Fargo is close to perfect; multiple viewings only make it better. Perhaps the Coen brothers decided that for their next effort they would just have fun. Who knows? But where Fargo is disciplined, structured, and perfectly timed, with well-drawn characters that live on the screen - The Big Lebowski seems lost from the opening credits, swerving around in a fog of passive stupidity, acted upon rather than acting. This, is course, is due to the nature of its protagonist, The Dude, played with convincing sloth by Jeff Bridges. (Rumor has it that Bridges prepared for the part by smoking pot incessantly, drinking heavily, and going for days without changing his clothes - what a pro!) To burn an entire sentence describing the action would be to squander perfectly good English words - this movie celebrates its pointlessness gleefully. However, what it lacks in traditional film staples like motivation, characters worth caring about, development, and meaningful conflict, it returns in the form of quirkiness - and nobody does quirkiness quite like the Coen brothers. John Goodman is insufferable as Walter, the deranged vet. Every second he's on screen, somewhere, somebody races to the bathroom. As Donny, Steve Buscemi is hilarious - no one since Chaplin has made so much out of so little dialogue. John Turturro is amazing as Jesus, the diabolical bowling maniac clad in purple. Tara Reid's Bunny is compelling and visually pleasing, while the great Julianne Moore provides the movie with one of its most memorable scenes. Naked except for a leather harness, and suspended high in the air above a massive canvas, she soars through space, hanging on a wire, frantically hurling paint as she goes. Such a scene would make even an awful movie wonderful, and The Big Lebowski, while flawed, is not awful. The other truly sensational scene is the bowling dream, a Busby Berkeley-like hallucination The Dude has after being knocked unconscious. This too is marvelous enough to redeem the picture. No discussion of The Big Lebowski would be complete with a mention of the three Nihilists - painfully thin men dressed in black who hunt The Dude with their weapon of choice - ferrets. Nobody will be seated during the horrifying throw-the-ferrets-into-the-bathtub scene! In short, there's enough fun here to make the trip worthwhile. TBL is not a great movie, at times it's like the idea of a movie that's too lazy to get out of bed, but the Coen brothers are just so good, and so good at being funny, that the trip is always worthwhile - even if there's no destination.

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