The Occasional Acid Flashback

Rating: 6/10 (30 April 2020)

The thing about movies made by the Coen Brothers is that I either love them (Fargo) or they leave me flat (The Big Lebowski). There is a thin line between comic and tragic, and here the lead characters never find it. As played by Jeff Bridges and John Goodman, two dumber Polacks have never graced the silver screen. Yet, there is nothing Polish or Polish-American about these losers---"The Dude" Lebowski and Walter Sobchak-except their names, and "Sobchak" is a very un-Polish spelling. There are a couple of assumptions that you have to make to laugh at the jokes in this 1998 film. One is that Polish surnames are innately funny and you should laugh when you hear one, especially when it is associated with intelligent thought or combined with an American given name ("Bunny Lebowski"). The only time you hear the word "Polish" in the movie is when The Dude explains to Sobchak that he is "not even Jewish": "You're f---ing Polish-Catholic." So why see this film? Because it raises a lot of questions, such as: What's so funny about stupidity? Why does John Goodman seem to be doing an imitation of Roseanne Barr? Would this have worked better as a cartoon? Why is "Lebowski" considered a "jerk-off name"? Another reason is to watch Julianne Moore deliver another bizarre but intriguing performance. As Maude Lebowski, she leads The Dude, a burned-out hippie, into the only one of his lines that made me laugh out loud by asking him post-coitally what he does for recreation. As if it's the first time he's ever been asked, he thinks for a second, then replies, "Go bowling, drive around, and the occasional acid flashback."