Review of The Big Lebowski (1998) by Greg R — 26 Dec 2018

I will preface this review by saying I am not a fan of bowling and I had high expectations based on what people who saw this movie had said. I generally enjoy screwball classics, but this was just painful to watch. The Coen brothers clearly have talent - it has something to do with visual style, offbeat characters and engaging smalltalk, but there is just nothing here. It falls way short of something like Pulp Fiction - this movie is almost literally about nothing, and not in a good and funny Seinfeld way. The jokes are so dry, they are dusty. I smirked a couple of times, especially closer to the end, but I spend the majority of the movie waiting for the good parts, and nothing happened.

I felt no empathy for any of the characters. Bridges was a loser (obviously by design) who uses his uh... stoner powers... to solve a kidnapping, and I couldn't have cared less if anything happened to him, just so long as he would stop flashing his underwear. Goodman had his funny moments, but again, not an empathetic character. There are lots of other strange characters in this movie, but they would enter and exit the scene and who cares?