Starring Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen Rated R, with violence, nudity and profanity Running time 115 minutes Jack gives this film a rating of 8 out of 10

By Jack Garner
Staff film critic

(March 6, 1997) -- The Big Lebowski doesn't always bowl strikes. But in this wacky comedy, even the gutter balls are funny.

Jeff Bridges and John Goodman star as two guys who live to bowl in this slice of surreal lunacy. It's the latest from Joel and Ethan Coen, two men who top any list of today's most original filmmakers.

True, the Coens aren't always sure where they're going in The Big Lebowski. The plot moves in fits and starts -- and doesn't really end spectacularly. After 117 minutes, it's just sort of . . . over.

But in a career that includes Raising Arizona, Barton Fink and Fargo, the Coen brothers have never before created characters as memorable or as hilarious as the gang in The Big Lebowski.

The film is a sublime comic character study from the light side of the Coen scale; more Raising Arizona than Barton Fink.

Bridges plays Jeff Lebowski, a laid-back, drugged-out, unemployed, latter-day hippie who prefers to be known only as "The Dude."

His best friend is Walter (Goodman), a hyped-up Vietnam veteran who isn't shy about pulling a gun to enforce a bowling rule. "But only because it's league play!"

As the film opens, Lebowski is attacked in his fleabag apartment by a couple of thugs who bash him because his wife supposedly owes a lot of money to a mobster. It's mistaken identity -- Lebowski has very little money and no wife. The chagrined thugs leave him alone, but only after one pees on The Dude's Oriental rug.

The Dude then seeks out the other Jeff Lebowski, a wealthy Pasadena millionaire (David Huddleston), to get reparation for the carpet. It's a big mistake, for soon the Dude and Walter are up to their bowling shirts in a family squabble, a kidnapping scheme, embezzlement and other insanities.

The entanglements eventually drag them through the world of kitschy Los Angeles performance art and put them on the hit lists of various unexpected adversaries.

Their proposed solution to everything doesn't hold much hope: "The hell with it," they say. "Let's go bowlin'."

The Big Lebowski plays out its craziness like the dream of an obsessed bowler who's also a Raymond Chandler mystery fan, and who had too much pizza and beer before going to sleep. (Actually, dream logic is a big part of Lebowski, highlighted by a fantasy dance extravaganza in a bowling alley, choreographed in the Busby Berkeley manner.)

Along the way, The Dude and Walter encounter Maude (Julianne Moore), the wealthy Lebowski's strange, estranged daughter and a would-be artist; Brandt (Fairport native Philip Seymour Hoffman), Lebowski's ever-efficient Man Friday; a gang of thugs who call themselves the Nihilists (hey, I'm not making this stuff up); and a cocky, self-absorbed bowler named Jesus (played by a hysterically funny John Turturro).

The Coens overreach, though, by using a cowboy (Sam Elliott) to narrate the tale. It's an utterly superfluous concept. He's got nothing to do with the story or the characters -- you wonder how he even knows what he's talking about.

As previously noted, the Coens also fail to come up with a knockout punch in the final reel.

But that's OK. I'm content to imagine these wonderful wackos haunting the back alleys -- and bowling alleys -- of Los Angeles, still searching for an ending.