the relaxed dude rides a roller coaster 
the big lebowski a film review by michael redman copyright 1998 by michael redman 
the most surreal situations are ordinary everyday life as viewed by an outsider . 
when those observers are joel and ethan coen , the surreal becomes bizarre . 
when the life is that of jeff " the dude " leboswki , the bizarre falls over the edge into the world of " what'sgoingonaroundhere " . 
the marvelous sound of " the stranger " ( sam elliot ) 's voice-over introduces the film . 
at least it does until he forgets what he was going to say and gives up . 
the dude ( jeff bridges ) is described as the " laziest man in los angeles , possibly the world " , although he's not so much slothful as he is relaxed . 
spending the last 30 years with a roach clip in one hand and a white russian in the other , he doesn't have much of a life , but he's having a good time . 
when asked what he does for fun , he responds " bowl , drive around and the occasional acid flashback " . 
lebowski's passion is bowling . 
when he's not rolling the ball down an alley towards a strike , things just happen to him . 
arriving home one night , he's beaten by thugs attempting to collect money that his wife owes them . 
even worse , they urinate on his rug . 
the problem is that the dude doesn't have a wife . 
his assailants realize that their target is a different lebowski when they glance around at his apartment . 
the " big " lebowski ( david huddleston ) is a multi-millionaire and his dudeness lives in two-room squalor . 
the next day , our ragtag hero visits his namesake's mansion attempting compensation for his soaked rug . 
the carpet is important to him because it pulls the room together : not surprisingly since it's virtually the only object there . 
when he's denied any money , he picks up a replacement rug off the floor . 
on his way out , he runs into lebowski's trophy babe wife bunny ( tara reid ) who offers to perform a sexual act that , according to rumor , is one of bill clinton's favorites for a thousand bucks . 
the penniless dude wisecracks that he's heading for the cash machine . 
later he gets an unexpected phone call enlisting his aid in being the bag man to deliver a ransom to bunny's kidnappers . 
this begins the trademarked coen brothers crimes-gone-wrong sequences . 
the kidnappers are impossibly inept . 
the dude and his cronies are even worse . 
every plan goes awry . 
you can almost see lebowski's brain churning in slow motion as he tries to figure out the clues . 
that's the story , but to tell the truth it doesn't much matter . 
there could be almost any plot and the film would be just as entertaining . 
the narrative only exists so we can watch the offbeat characters and the quirky predicaments they fall into . 
the dude's bowling buddies walter ( john goodman ) and donny ( steve buscemi ) look like people you'd see on the street but , like everything else in this film , they're not quite what they seem . 
walter is a vet as stuck in vietnam as the dude is in the sixties . 
everything that happens reminds him of a situation in the nam . 
when a fellow bowler crosses the foul line but won't admit it , walter pulls a gun on him until he marks a zero on the score sheet . 
donny gets precious few words in between walter's screaming and the dude's rambling . 
when he does , walter shouts him down with horrendous albeit seemingly unintentional bowling puns . 
donny is " out of his league " and doesn't " have a frame of reference " . 
the film is peppered with people for whom the term " character " would be an understatement . 
the big lebowski's daughter maude , an avant-garde " vaginal " artist , paints while swinging naked in a leather apparatus like an s&m mary martin . 
the kidnappers are german techno nihilist bikers . 
bunny lebowski is a high school cheerleader turned porno star . 
most impressive is john turturro in his far too small role as a hispanic bowler . 
as the flamenco music swells , we see him putting on his lavender hose . 
the camera pans up to an all-purple skin-tight bowling outfit with " jesus " ( pronounced with a " j " , not an " h " ) embroidered on the pocket . 
he addresses the lane with intense seriousness and one painted fingernail . 
his tongue slowly snakes out and lovingly licks the glowing bowling ball . 
bridges works the dude as if he had been living him for decades and maybe he has . 
i can't think of anyone else who could have done a better job . 
buscemi has a limited role , but he plays it perfectly . 
the more that i see john goodman the more convinced i am that he's one of the treasures of our time . 
it's odd to think that most of the world knows him only as roseanne barr's television husband . 
more like the coen's " raising arizona " than their hit " fargo " , " the big lebowski " demands an open mind and even more open eyes . 
a mark of the coen brothers is that even with all wonderful dream sequences and the broad slapstick physical comedy on the screen , much of the humor is subtle and easy to miss . 
there's so much going on that frequently it disappears before you can see it . 
walking out of the theater , i felt that the film had something important to say . 
on further examination , i wasn't sure exactly what it was . 
 " if you meet jesus at the bowling alley , it's not going to be what you expect " ? 
 " when the going gets weird , the weird go bowling " ? 
maybe there's no real message . 
perhaps it's just a roller coaster ride through a hilarious world . 
maybe that's enough . 
 ( michael redman has written this column for 23 years and just realized that he was so taken with the dude that he ran out of space to talk about " the man in the iron mask " starring that favorite of 14-year-old girls of all ages . 
redman@bvoice . com is the eaddress for estuff . )