Not perfect but wonderfully imaginative and humorous

Rating: Null/10 (19 October 2003)

When a case of mistaken identity results in a Chinese man urinating on the rung of Jeff `The Dude' Lebowski, the dude looks to his millionaire namesake to compensate him. When the man's young wife is kidnapped, the dude is brought in to help drop off the money and get her back. However when things go wrong he begins to see it is not as simple as he was led to believe.
Although they can often be too clever for their own good (well, sometimes  not often) this is one of their cleverest and most imaginative out and out comedies. The plot is unnecessarily complicated but only serves to give the film a larger than life feel as one unusual event follows another unlikely one! While it all very much comes to naught, the delivery is the key. In terms of laughs it is lighter than one might expect from a comedy in the imdb top 250, however it delivers a constant state of amusement as well as some laugh out loud moments  it's just not that type of humour is all.
However the dialogue is very quotable and funnier the more you know it and understand the lines. What makes it feel much more imaginative is the many inspired scenes that run through the film  mostly dream sequences set up as big musical numbers  but also the sheer weight of unusual characters who come to life so easily and are very funny to watch. Part of this is with the cast of course and they all pretty much do a good job. Bridges is simply made for this role and fills it so easily. Goodman gives a great performance and steals many of his scenes while Buscemi does good work but in a much different role. Character actors like Huddleston, Hoffman and Stormare all give good support while Turturro is incredibly memorable despite only having a few minutes of screen time. I wasn't sure about Moore but she was OK and didn't slow things too much for me.
Overall this is one of the Coen's most enjoyable comedies to date. I know Intolerable Cruelty is out soon and I'll see what that's like, but so far this film just has so much creative energy and imagination that, although all a bit much and not a perfect film, it is very hard not to enjoy.