3 of 10
Cinematography by Roger Deakins
Jeff Bridges
John Goodman
Julianne Moore
Steve Buscemi
Philip Seymour Hoffman
John Turturro
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| The Big Lebowski 3 of 10 |
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| Directed by Joel Coen Cinematography by Roger Deakins Jeff Bridges John Goodman Julianne Moore Steve Buscemi Philip Seymour Hoffman John Turturro |
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| Yet another strange film from the quirky Coen duo. This one revolves around a character named simply The Dude, played by Jeff Bridges. He gets himself into a couple of pretty complicated situations. I won't say more than that, because I'm not sure I can�not sure I understand exactly what happens myself. John Goodman gets into the complicated situations along with him. And there are a lot of other really bizarre and comical characters. (Hoffman's butler comes to mind immediately, as does Buscemi's bowling idiot.) Some of the film's scenes are funny, some are crude, and a few are absurdly, outrageously hilarious. (There is a scene involving John Turturro and a bowling tournament that really must be seen to be truly appreciated.) Finally, the movie has a serious problem. And that problem is that the Coen brothers make no real effort to stay focused on a story of any kind, and there is simply too much weirdness to handle. For that reason, it had a hard time holding my interest, and felt like it ran about 20 minutes too long. It's just not possible for me to stay interested in extreme caricatures for that long; there needs to be some plausible, coherent storyline as well. (O Brother had this same problem, I felt. There was that whole cows-in-the-flood scene, and the whole Cyclops scene. This movie is the same. For example, towards the end of the film there are a handful of completely random scenes with Sam Elliott. Now I normally enjoy Sam Elliott a lot, but these scenes do absolutely nothing; they serve no purpose, except for maybe a little empty philosophizing. And when you start to see Jeff Bridges dancing down a huge flight of checkered stairs, flying over downtown LA at night, or hovering magically above a bowling lane surrounded by a lot of dancing girls, it's just too...something. Wacky, maybe? Absurd? Absurd things are only funny for a while. Then they become�absurd.) Oh. And I should probably mention one more thing. When the rating board says "R for pervasive language," they are REALLY not kidding. Pervasive is definitely the word. Wow. | ||||||