Metascore
69 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 22 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 22
  2. Negative: 1 out of 22
  1. It put a smile on my face that never left for 117 minutes.
  2. It's paved with delightfully irregular and unanticipated bits of business that stimulate the viewer to stay fully alert, while renewing our faith in the sheer joy of watching movies.
  3. With their inspired, absurdist taste for weird, peculiar Americana-but a sort of neo-Americana that is entirely invented-the Coens have defined and mastered their own bizarre subgenre.
  4. 80
    Brilliantly scripted and full of a virtual Who's Who of familiar faces, The Big Lebowski is yet another golden hunk of totally unique celluloid from the versatile Brothers Cohen.
  5. Watching it amble along is enough of a treat, since the Coens populate this story with oddballs and bowling balls of such comic variety.
  6. 80
    The movie is as visually inventive and wildly eccentric as the Coens' earlier movies, but it lacks the emotional maturity and moral clarity of 1996's "Fargo."
  7. 75
    Some may complain The Big Lebowski rushes in all directions and never ends up anywhere. That isn't the film's flaw, but its style.
  8. Viewers with a taste for bizarre, even surreal, humor will have a ball.
  9. 75
    This is a comic amusement park ride – a wildly uneven movie that offers tremendous pleasure for the moment, even if it doesn't stand up well to post-screening analysis and scrutiny.
  10. It's a pinball arcade of a flick -- the Coens invent a bunch of wonderfully flaky characters, stick them into a Plexiglas narrative, and let them bounce off each other.
  11. Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    70
    It's neither the clean strike Coen-heads expected after Fargo nor the gutter ball anticipated by Coen-phobes like myself.
  12. Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    70
    Spiked with wonderfully funny sequences and some brilliantly original notions, The Big Lebowski, a pseudo-mystery thriller with a keen eye and ear for societal mores and modern figures of speech, nonetheless adds up to considerably less than the sum of its often scintillating parts.
  13. The Big Lebowski is packed with show-offy filmmaking and as a result is pretty entertaining.
  14. Nearly everything in The Big Lebowski is a put-on, but all that leaves you with is the Coens' bizarrely over-deliberate, almost Teutonic form of rib nudging.
  15. Reviewed by: David Denby
    60
    An off-kilter thriller with a sad-sack hero.
  16. This film feels completely haphazard, thrown together without much concern for organizing intelligence.
  17. Reviewed by: Jack Kroll
    60
    Frothing from two mouths, they parody film noir, megaviolent thrillers, sports allegories, ravaged-war-veteran movies, existentialist Westerns, even Busby Berkeley musicals.
  18. Reviewed by: Alex Ross
    60
    The great flaw in most of the Coens' work is, surprisingly, an inability to sustain a plot over a two-hour span.
  19. Although some of its parts are brilliantly executed and played by a terrific cast, the result is scattered, overamplified and unsatisfying.
  20. Reviewed by: Barbara Shulgasser
    50
    It is a visual tour de force, but as a whole the movie slowly deflates into a cross between "Arizona" and "The Hudsucker Proxy".
  21. Reviewed by: Daphne Merkin
    50
    The clever dialogue, seductive camera work, and beautiful production design (the lavish dream sequences look like Busby Berkeley on Ecstasy) almost make you forget the vacancy at the movie's core, but in the end there's no escaping the feeling that the Coens are speaking a secret language.
  22. Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    30
    If it's all supposed to be in fun, why does it feel so much like an insult?
User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 171 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 65 out of 70
  2. Negative: 1 out of 70
  1. The greatest creation ever handed down to mankind from God above, and I thank him. And don't mess with that, because after all, you don't **** with the Jesus. Full Review »
  2. Personally this movie was fantastic and I loved every minute of it cause I mean why wouldnt any person like a movie with Jeff Bridges and Bowling! Haha Full Review »
  3. The Big Lebowski is the funniest movie ever created, the Coen Brothers deliver one of their best movies about a slacker caught up in a case of mistaken identity that leads him into a ludicrous situation involving kidnap. The movie stays a comedy great without forcing laughs upon you, it is smart and well thought out with a story and characters that could easily be stupid and pathetically displayed, but the Coen brothers have portrayed a film that is very interesting with characters portrayed very well and entertainingly, Jeff Bridges is fantastic as our lead character Dude with his carefree attitude and relaxed world being thrown into disarray his change of relaxed and calm is changed drastically with him becoming a man who is absolutely confused and who just wants to go bowling. John Goodman and John Turturro displaying two of the most memorable and hilarious characters you'll ever come across. Goodman as Walter, Dude's best friend and war veteran who is going through a bit of a crisis as he attempts to help the Dude whilst also becoming distressed over the memories of the Vietnam war, usually at inappropriate times. Turturro's brief appearance as a rival bowler who has a bit of a rivalry toward Walter and instantly steals the movie with his character Jesus. You will never watch a film quite as entertaining and hilarious as this one. One of the greatest movies ever created. Full Review »