The Big Lebowski...2?

Oh how many people, not least the Coen Brothers, laughed when Tara Reid got the wrong end of a soundbite stick and announced that a second outing for the Dude was in the works earlier this year. It did put me in mind that I should take a second look at the original Lebowski though, given I last saw it a decade ago.

I'm never sure with the Coens. I love Raising Arizona, I LOVE The Hudsucker Proxy and remember Fargo as one of those watershed independent's in the 90s when I was teenagey and bright-eyed. Since then...hmm. Nothing against them, but I'm not always with them either. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is gorgeous to look at, but saved as a watch only by the superb performances, otherwise it meanders all over the place. The Man Who Wasn't There is again a lovely piece of film, but seems unsubstantial afterwards. I greatly enjoyed Intolerable Cruelty and don't care if that's an inflammatory statement, but will go with the crowd on The Ladykillers, which was doubly insulting being both a bad comedy and an Ealing desecration. (I thought Tom Hanks was superb, though.)

No Country For Old Men...eehhhh...honestly, really...I didn't care for it. Like all Coen films, it's beautifully made and contains many great performances, but it's really hard to give a shit when pretty much everyone gets killed and the whole thing is wound up by unrelated voiceovers meditating on the world and I end up thinking it's a pointless exercise in nihilism.

So, at my sister's request to see more Jeff Bridges movies - and how can I not honour that given how much I love the man - I looked at The Big Lebowski again. I'd forgotten a lot - the elegiac Sam Elliot voiced opening for one, Philip Seymour Hoffman for another - and did, mostly, enjoy seeing it again. Bridges is of course transcendent, seemingly going for easy stoner presence, but with a constant, working, befuddled mind beneath all the laid-back vocal bluster. But though I enjoyed the film, it's parts seemed to hang very loosely. Julianne Moore seemed to have been given a tape of Jennifer Jason Leigh's Amy Archer and asked to emulate, and John Goodman's character - not the actor - but Walter himself, was a constant irritant. and I just wanted The Dude to kick him to the curb a lot sooner.

The story is Hammett and Chandler run through an easy-going man's view, but still, nothing actually happens. The Dude is bounced from place to place until he makes the crucial leap about funds and until then the narrative threatens to drag on forever. It's a very slow two hours, punctuated by stellar scenes and moments yes, but ultimately content to wander around, like The Dude himself. That may be the intention, but like No Country and O Brother, it's an intention that just doesn't thrill me.

I've yet to see True Grit, but I am looking forward to it a lot.