Under bowling spell

Rating: 5/10 (5 July 2007)

That game in which you throw a huge ball at an arrangement of wooden pins trying to pull them all down and stay suffering the suspense of watching the ball trajectory along the alley till the end (in slow motion camera is much more thrilling) where it can pull them all down or fail some or most of them showing that at bowling like in life you are a loser. This movie strikes a certain parallel between bowling and real life, being the story of the misadventures of Jeffrey Lebowski (and Jeff Bridges performs a good role at it) caused by the fact that he has got the same name as a famous wealthy man which gets him into a lot of trouble narrated in a series of tragicomic episodes along with his two bowling pals one of them pretending to be a very smart guy but who only brings more trouble to our Lebowski man. Some of these episodes are funny indeed and are the best part of the movie since the story itself isn't worth much. Some others are not so funny including the one of an unnecessary death because death is rarely funny. The dialogues could be funnier if they didn't abuse of a well-known obscene four letter word which is repeated about three times in every five word sentence. I am no moralist at all but never could find any humour or aesthetic value in four letter words. I neither condemn nor approve of them; they just don't make me vibrate at all leaving me totally indifferent. They are only necessary in a work of art when they serve the purpose of defining someone's character. Is that the case here? In conclusion we can say that it's a lukewarm comedy lacking vibration.