Some film critics revisit The Big Lebowski
They’re asked to rethink their negative reviews twenty years later
It’s too easy to spill ink waxing about the ways in which the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebow
ski has embedded itself in our culture.
The film, released 20 years ago this week, is no average cult flick showing at midnight at your local art house theatre.
Though the movie was not a huge box-office success, it has since spawned a pseudo-religion, Dudeism, with more than 450,000 “ordained priests” and annual festivals around the country.
But there is a small group of people who were not impressed with the film, at least when it came out: many critics were quick to dismiss it as self-indulgent and chaotic.
We took a look at some of the more negative reviews of the film written after its release on March 6, 1998, and reached out with a simple query for the critics who penned them: Would you review The Big Lebowski similarly now? Alex Ross, Slate á 1998 review: “The great flaw in most of the Coens’ work is, surprisingly, an inability to sustain a plot over a two-hour span … In
Lebowski, we lose track not only of plot devices but of whole characters, who come and go without finding a reason to be.”
á 2018 revision: “There was a brief period when I wanted to become a movie critic, but this piece and a few other attempts for Slate showed a lack of aptitude for the genre. I’ve been better off sticking to music. As for The Big Lebowski itself,
Blood Simple is still my favourite Coen brothers movie and I still have issues with their work, but the bottom line is that I missed the point.” David Denby, New York magazine
Review: “The Big Lebowski is an off-kilter thriller with a sadsack hero. The Dude shuffles through life in a fumy, pothead haze; he’s so slack-brained he can’t finish a sentence ... It’s only amusing the first time the Dude gets lost in his own story — a story so incoherent that he can’t explain it to anyone. What’s the point of scoring off morons who think they are cool? Jeff Bridges has so much dedication as an actor that he sacrifices himself to the Coen brothers’ self-defeating conception.”
á 2018 Revision: Denby said that his opinion of the film had changed, pointing to a piece he’d written about the Coen brothers for the New Yorker in 2008.
“The Big Lebowski received mediocre reviews and did little initial business, but over the years it has built an effervescent cult following,” Denby wrote in the story. “The devotion is entirely deserved.” Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
á Review: “The Coen brothers are not twins but they might as well be. The films they make together are self-contained, almost hermetic alternative universes, worlds that amuse the brothers to no end but are not guaranteed to connect with anyone else ... What you remember and enjoy about this film (if you remember and enjoy it at all) is not the forest but individual trees, engaging riffs as only the Coens can concoct them that amuse and entertain though they connect to nothing else in the film.”
á 2018 revision: “I have not reseen The Big Lebowski since it came out. I am well aware of its cult reputation and wonder myself if I would see it differently now, but I just don’t know.” Daphne Merkin, The New Yorker
á Review: “The Big Lebowski is so drenched in knowingness — it pays homage to everyone from John Lennon to Theodor Herzl — that there’s nothing really at stake … The film’s sole gesture toward a narrative structure, for those who still require that sort of thing, is its tongue-in-cheek use of voiceover … The Big Lebowski lacks what even the most unhinged comedies must have in order to work: the recognition that out there, beyond the pratfalls and the wisecracks, lurks the darkness..”
2018 revision: “I think it is a quintessential insider movie, one that plays in this shrewd way to groupthink. You’re either in on it, or you’re not in on it,” Merkin said by phone. “When I rewatched it, there were things I was more struck by. First of all, it’s beautiful to watch with all that cinematography. The Busby Berkeley sequence. I was struck by all that. And think I was more amused by the intense laidbackness that the film embodies. ” Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle
Review: “Although some of its parts are brilliantly executed and played by a terrific cast, the result is scattered, overamplified and unsatisfying.
The Coens have a grand time establishing Bridges’ character, and the bowling alley scenes they’ve written for the Dude and his buddies — a loose-cannon Vietnam vet played by Goodman and a nearly wordless dunce played by (Steve) Buscemi — are pure gold … The Big Lebowski is ultimately too clever for its own good.”
2018 revision: “I think I probably would like it better. I’ve become more accustomed to the Coen brothers’ style … but the comedies they do often feel manic. It isn’t exactly my style.
“I enjoy Jeff Bridges’ performance very much, but what I said there about it shouldering more than it can, I think there is an excess of characters and goofy plot elements going on. … It’s the same with reading a book and seeing a movie — I change and it’s often a new experience to revisit something.”