It is a crime this did not receive an Academy Award

Rating: 10/10 (27 November 2006)

I can say without a doubt that this is the Coen Brothers best film. Though they have made many other great movies and are two of my most favorite directors/writers in Hollywood now, they absolutely shine with The Big Lebowski. The funniest thing about this movie is how all of the peculiar and hilarious characters and situations come together so gracefully. Where Raising Arizona and Barton Fink tried fairly successfully at accomplishing this feat, the Big Lebowski does this flawlessly: The Dude's crazy dream sequences, Walter's paranoid, infuriated ramblings about history and American policy, the ridiculous dialogue between the Dude, Walter, and Donnie, Maude's elitist LA interactions with the Dude, the aggressive German kidnappers, and the narration of the strange Cowboy, played masterfully by Sam Elliot all merge seamlessly to form a comedic masterpiece that gets better on repeated viewings.
Like the hugely successful show Seinfeld, the main characters, Walter and the Dude, never seem to accomplish anything of any value, but the combination of Walter's incompetent aggression and the Dude's incredible misfortune produces a story as complex as it is funny. At the end of this movie, you may be asking yourself what you just saw and what good came from all the foul language and unusual dialogue between Walter, the Dude, and the other characters in the movie. The best thing is to just sit back and laugh uncontrollably at the strange situations the characters find themselves in, along with the accompanying dialgue.
Every time I watch this movie, and it has been quite a lot, I pick up new quotes and find new things to laugh at. As mentioned in the summary, the fact that out of all the Coen Brothers films, the only two to win Academy awards was Fargo and O Brother Where Art Thou is a travesty and does a disservice to the inherent comedic genius that this movie displays. Although I hate saying never, I don't think a movie of this comedic magnitude will come out again.