As with all cult formations, The Big Lebowski‘s passionate following was a slow burn. When The Coen Bros.’ crime comedy/stoner polemic was released in 1998, it was largely ignored by audiences and only greeted warmly by critics (it holds a respectable but not stellar 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. It wasn’t until a few years had passed that The Big Lebowski started making rounds on college campuses and at midnight shows. Since its release, it has done nothing but grow in popularity and fanboy prestige, to the point where it has become the subject of a popular fan convention called Lebowskifest. This is a proper cult hit. People love it.
And, if there’s love in the air, it’s up to Trolling to raise a stink. While thousands of people adore the heck out of his peculiar little film – perhaps to a completely inappropriate degree – it is certainly, if we’re honest with ourselves, not the masterpiece it is often hailed as. The film is lazy and strange. The dialogue may be fun to repeat, but it’s not the bottomless well of wit that its fans believe it to be. Indeed, we here at Trolling will go so far (as is our wont) to declare the following: The Big Lebowski SUCKS. Prepare to seethe, my little urban achievers, because everything is about to be fucked.
There is a wonderful, weird energy to The Big Lebowski that cannot be denied, and the supporting characters are largely appealingly weird. It’s lightweight and good-natured when it could have been thudding and mean. But at the end of the day, this worshiped slacker parable is little more than a limp Raising Arizona retread with a baffled, lazy impotent sluggard for a hero.
Until next week, let the hate mail flow.
Witney Seibold is the head film critic at Nerdist.com, and co-host of CraveOnline’s The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly Trolling articles here on Crave, and follow his baffling ramblings on “The Twitter” at @WitneySeibold. He thanks a grateful nation.
5 Reasons Why The Big Lebowski SUCKS
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The Dude is Not a Role Model
This may be more a problem with the fans of The Big Lebowski than with the film itself, but it needs to be said right out of the gate: The Dude is not a role model. He's not intended to be a role model. His rushed late-film mantra of abiding is not profound or even well thought out. The Dude is supposed to be an antihero at best, and at most likely a buffoon. He's called lazy, smokes weed as a matter of course, and doesn't have a job. His stale, carry-over hippie ethos of authority dismissal is depicted as moribund and ridiculous in the 1990s. And his friends are all terrible people. And you admire him?
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The Plot is Extraneous
I understand that The Big Lebowski is supposed to be a character piece, but it's ultimately constructed like a noir film, and, as such, should perhaps have a stronger story than the one it has. It starts out as a ransom plot gone awry, but that angle is dropped for extended periods as the zonked-out hero kind of forgets what's going on, has his car stolen, visits a pornographer, and frets with decreasing intensity. This is not really a crime plot so much as a random series of happenings that only eventually connect in an unsatisfying way.
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The Hero Does Nothing
In terms of plot function, The Dude is unnecessary. Like a lesser cipher from a Dickens novel, The Dude only has things happen to him, rather than making any sort of active impact on the story. Walter is the instigator of all the action. The Dude is the recipient. He is passive, weak-willed, dare I say boring. He doesn't have a job he has to flee from, and he doesn't seem to want much of anything out of life. There's nothing at stake for The Dude. The only plot-reacted action he takes is... well, nothing.
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The Early '90s Setting is Unneeded
The Big Lebowski is set in the early 1990s, despite having been released in 1998. There is some footage of George Bush on a TV set early in the film, and The Dude repeats some of Bush's rhetoric surrounding the Iraq war, but aside from these little incidentals, there is no reason for the chronological change. There is no comment on the times, no visual indicators that this is seven years prior, no historical context. This could have been set in 1998 without anything more than a few tweaks.
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It's The Coens Repeating Themselves
I liked The Big Lebowski better when it was called Raising Arizona. Seriously, this is the Coen Bros. repeating themselves to an embarrassing degree. In terms of wacky noir plots, out-there characters, and hapless heroes who have trouble affecting change, complete with the silly asides from funny supporting cast members, one need go no further than Raising Arizona, released 11 years earlier. The tone is identical, the story similar. Additionally, the characters are more interesting, the story more frantic, and the overall film simply funnier. If one saw The Big Lebowski second, then they'll know what I'm talking about.
