THE BIG LEBOWSKI This Aggression Will Not Stand, Man... Review By Bruce Cantwell I went to see O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? last week with the vague hope that lightning would strike twice. It didn't. George Clooney turned in a typical George Clooney performance. Now that Al Gore has some time on his hands, maybe he can give Clooney some charisma lessons. I saw red flags the moment I heard that Clooney was in the picture, much as I was alarmed when I heard that Jeff Bridges was in their last picture, THE BIG LEBOWSKI. Bridges was coming off THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES and had a lot to answer for. Fortunately, the moment the camera showed "The Dude" shambling through a Ralph's grocery store, opening a bottle of Half & Half to sniff it for freshness and paying for it with a check for 67¢, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. Jeff Bridges looked like hell. He was on board for a Coen Brothers movie. The Dude, we learn from the DVD interview with the fidgety Joel and Ethan Coen was an aging hippy friend of theirs who lived in a hole until he one day found an Oriental rug that "really ties the room together." The brothers wondered what would happen if this quintessentially LA character were thrown into a quintessentially LA (Raymond Chandler) mystery so they started rewriting THE BIG SLEEP with The Dude as a reluctant, "I'd rather be bowling" Sam Spade. The story, narrated by Sam Elliott as Cowboy non sequitur, is set during the time of The Gulf War. When porno king Jackie Treehorn sends goons to shakedown Jeffrey Lebowski, the millionaire husband of one of his "actresses", the dummies blunder onto The Dude who legally, but not when he can help it, goes by the same name. In a senseless act of vandalism, one of the goons soils The Dude's rug (the one that really ties the room together). The Dude shares his tale of woe with Vietnam veteran bowling buddy Walter (John Goodman), who declares "This aggression will not stand." The Dude confronts "The Big Lebowski" for reparations. THE BIG SLEEP is a hell of a convoluted jumping off point. Neither its author nor those who filmed it fully followed the plot. The Coen Brothers were concerned that their gallery of screwball characters and situations would lose the audience. They were thoroughly relieved that the comic chemistry of Bridges and Goodman as the constantly quarreling bowling buddies proved solid enough to withstand any shaggy dog story they threw at them. For sheer, goofy fun, The Dude abides.	Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/big_lebowski.php3 on line 34 Warning: include(http://myenvoy.com/movies/side.php3) [function.include]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/big_lebowski.php3 on line 34 Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'http://myenvoy.com/movies/side.php3' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/big_lebowski.php3 on line 34
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