#6 "The Big Lebowski" (1998)

So this is where I shrug my shoulders, cop out and say: "What can I say about this film that hasn't already been said?" Probably nothing whatsoever.

And so to differentiate my unique commentary and establish my authorial voice I have one word for you: Paleontologically.

There - let's see if anyone's even written that in reference to The Big Lebowski.

Thought not.

In fact, this is one film where the imdb Trivia section is really worth a read, particularly for the descriptions of all the details in the film that were taken directly from real life (an insanely large number, as it turns out).

Honestly, I really did not get this movie when it first came out. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy it or had trouble following the plot or didn't get (at least a decent number of) the references. It just felt like the script was a mess of every single thing the Coen brothers thought was weird and funny while they were writing it.

15 years on and a good solid decade of Lebowski-referring later, I get it. Well, probably not all of it, but enough to just enjoy the ride and laugh my ass off. Yes, it kind of is a mess of references to everything that made Joel and Ethan crack up at the time, but now I'm cracking up along with them.

This time around I also really loved the central joke of the movie - that this is a classic LA noir gone horribly awry by replacing the jaded detective, doggedly determined to get to the truth no matter what the stakes, with a likeable post-60's burn-out who just really, really wants his rug back.

"The Big Lebowski" checks off all the genre elements - the shady characters who are not what they seem, the double crosses, the femme fatales, the guns and a protagonist who gets knocked out with alarming frequency while apparently never suffering from concussion. But while those elements are driven to hyperbolic and hilarious extremes, they're constantly and even more comedically deflated by The Dude's good-natured insouciance and very reasonable exasperation with it all.

Being the fulcrum for that tension between over- and under-statement and letting the Dude be both the comedy and the straight man in a world way wackier than he is, is a hell of a weight to put on one actor. Jeff Bridges' genius is that he nails that balance perfectly, while making The Dude so utterly human and likeable that we keep routing for him, no matter how weird or how messed up things get.

I can now see that this really is a movie to watch and re-watch and re-watch again and I believe that hundreds of years from now this will still be a movie that will fascinate people (or whatever replaces us) who want to understand American life in the late 20th century culturally, sociologically and, indeed, paleontologically.

Man.