The Big Lebowski Reviews
Adds up to considerably less than the sum of its often scintillating parts.
The result is a lot of laughs and a feeling of awe toward the craftsmanship involved. I doubt that there'll be anything else like it the rest of this year.
Far from being shallow pastiche, it's actually about something: what it means to be a man, to be a friend, and to be a 'hero' for a particular time and place.
A typical Coen brothers film is like no film you've ever seen.
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| Original Score: 3/4
As tempting as it is to completely dismiss The Big Lebowski, it's hard to do because the Coens are able to create wickedly funny eccentrics and possess the ability to energize certain actors to inhabit them completely.
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
The Big Lebowski is a mess. But what a glorious, wonderfully-entertaining mess it is.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The Dude and Sobchak begin as caricatures too, but they're allowed to grow into something deeper, if only because the humanist economy of the Coens' surrealist vaudeville allows for a couple of human beings within the tapestry of freaks.
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| Original Score: 2/4
USA Today
Top Critic| Original Score: 3/4
There are more ideas here, more wacko side characters and plot curlicues than the film can support, and inevitably it deflates from having to shoulder so much.
A genial spoof about life on the unhinged margins of L.A. that's a lot more carefully constructed than it pretends to be.
This plot need not be taken too seriously. Watching it amble along is enough of a treat, since the Coens populate this story with oddballs and bowling balls of such comic variety.
| Original Score: 4/5
Nearly everything in The Big Lebowski is a put-on, and all that leaves you with is the Coens' bizarrely over-deliberate, almost Teutonic form of rib nudging.
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| Original Score: B-
