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Big Lebowski, The

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 22 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 102 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy
Written by:
Ethan Coen
Joel Coen
Directed by: Joel Coen
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 6, 1998
DVD: November 5, 2002
Running Time: 117 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / UK
Summary
RATING: R for pervasive strong language, drug content, sexuality and brief violence
Starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, David Huddleston, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tara Reid, and John Turturro
A scattered farce about a pothead bowler who is mistaken for a deadbeat philanthropist.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Barton Fink Blood Simple: The Director's Cut Burn After Reading Fargo Intolerable Cruelty Miller's Crossing No Country for Old Men O Brother, Where Art Thou? Raising Arizona The Hudsucker Proxy The Ladykillers The Man Who Wasn't There
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
It put a smile on my face that never left for 117 minutes.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
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.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Rita Kempley
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."
Read Full Review >The New York Times Elvis Mitchell
Watching it amble along is enough of a treat, since the Coens populate this story with oddballs and bowling balls of such comic variety.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Merle Bertrand
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.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
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.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Viewers with a taste for bizarre, even surreal, humor will have a ball.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
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.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Michael Sragow
It's neither the clean strike Coen-heads expected after Fargo nor the gutter ball anticipated by Coen-phobes like myself.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The Big Lebowski is packed with show-offy filmmaking and as a result is pretty entertaining.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
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.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
This film feels completely haphazard, thrown together without much concern for organizing intelligence.
Read Full Review >Slate Alex Ross
The great flaw in most of the Coens' work is, surprisingly, an inability to sustain a plot over a two-hour span.
Read Full Review >Newsweek Jack Kroll
Frothing from two mouths, they parody film noir, megaviolent thrillers, sports allegories, ravaged-war-veteran movies, existentialist Westerns, even Busby Berkeley musicals.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Daphne Merkin
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.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann
Although some of its parts are brilliantly executed and played by a terrific cast, the result is scattered, overamplified and unsatisfying.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Examiner Barbara Shulgasser
It is a visual tour de force, but as a whole the movie slowly deflates into a cross between "Arizona" and "The Hudsucker Proxy".
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
If it's all supposed to be in fun, why does it feel so much like an insult?
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 9.6 (out of 10) based on 102 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Derek B gave it a10:
Many people get frustrated with this film with the fact that the story does not make sense or goes anywhere. To me, this is part of the reason why this is one of the best movies ever to be executed. It's more about the amazing characters created along with the perfectly crafted jokes and timing of them. This movie also has some great visual work. It is an original work of art. Perfectly cast, directed, and edited.
Crab B gave it a5:
What a terribly overrated film. A hardly funny stoner flick, it goes for to long and is quite simply a bore. Cult classics are supposed to be good not haphazard mediocrity. On a more positive note the directing was at times brilliant with many memorable shots and some of the jokes amusing. The worst Coen film I have seen.
German N. gave it a10:
This movie is spectacular....I must admit that the first time I saw it I thought it was "OK" but I've seen it many times since and it gets better as I listen to the dialog more carefully. John Goodman is like a cranky Grizzly bear and steals many scenes with his angry outbursts and irrelevant rationale. The "real" Lebowski is like Dick Cheney poured into a wheelchair with a porn star wife......Phillip Semour Hoffman is a brilliant brown noser and the Dude really ties the movie together with turns of defeated slacker logic and certain charming familiarity that makes him an ironic and lovable hero.
Jim S gave it a10:
Masterfully written, cast, acted, and directed, this is an absurdist romp that never disappoints, sometimes surprises, and always entertains. Eminently quotable and relentlessly funny, this movie is worthy of its cult status. I feel sorry for the people who do not enjoy it; one of my all time favorite movies.
Matthew B gave it a10:
This is as close to a masterpiece as a movie about an unemployed bowler embroiled in a kidnapping scam can be.
Brendino C. gave it a10:
This is a masterpiece. I don't know much about film but I do know when something is great. This is something that is great. Take the scene when the Dude is talking to an apparently despondent Mr. Lebowski in front of his fireplace. While Lebowski laments, Dude just sits there dumbly, as if only half-aware of his surroundings. This scene could have been an emotional window into Lebowski's soul, but all such connotations are ruined by the Dude in all his stonerdom. The hero is just that, a stoner walking though life as if by accident.
Eric C. gave it a10:
Some of the most surreal sequences I have ever seen, this has to be the slacker equivalent to Pulp Fiction. Like it or not, we all know the Dude, and there is a little of the Dude in a lot of us.
