99/100 (the highest review I've given movies)

Rating: 10/10 (31 August 1998)

I'm one of those sick people who actually didn't like Fargo all that much. The characters were boring, the plot was uninspired, and the sense of humor was irritating and pretentious (I guess I'm the only one that doesn't think boring dialogue about ice and snow between cops at a murder scene is laugh-out-loud hilarious). The Big Lebowski, however, is ten times the movie Fargo is.
The characters are just great. Even minor characters get special quirks that make them far more interesting than the major characters in most recent movies. And the protagonist, Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), is the kind of guy who wanders down to the supermarket in his bathrobe at night to write a 69 cent check for a carton of milk. I'm tired of boring, ridiculously one-dimensional main characters who get close-ups every other second while using lines like, "I'm not going back without my men!" The Dude is an unlikely hero if there ever was one, and that is why he is a most refreshing and memorable one. There's The Dude's best friend Walter (John Goodman), a well-read and impulsive Vietnam vet; Jesus, the purple -clad sex offender/bowler; Maude Lebowski(Juliane Moore), the feminist artist who speaks of "coitus"; and a crazed group of ideologically-confused nihilists, among so many other great characters. The dialogue is priceless.
The plot is very unique and ridiculous, but it fits the movie absolutely perfectly. The Dude and Walter get involved in a shady world of kidnapping , embezzlement, porn, reactionary cops, and just about everything else, when all the Dude ever wanted was compensation for a rug of his that had been urinated on by confused debt collectors who were looking for a different man also named Jeff Lebowski.
There are so many great little touches in this movie. The Dude's dream /blackout sequences are hilarious (complete with Saddam Hussein handing out bowling shoes and bowling combined with porn imagery). The script is very clever and the movie as a whole is an incredible experience. The best part of The Big Lebowski is how strangely wonderful the whole thing is; don 't expect most moronic movie critics to understand it. In a perfect world, The Big Lebowski would be in the AFI's Top 100 instead of Fargo. It's the type of movie you never want to end.