Word: dudeness
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Besides the movie's constant-laugh screenplay, its biggest asset is the performance of Jeff Bridges, who seems to have found the role of his career in the Dude. The Dude lives in small apartment in decidedly un-chic part of L.A., in the already mythic time of "the early '90s," as the film's oddly anachronistic cowboy-narrator tells us. If pressured ever so slightly, the Dude will admit that he's a bum--but it's obviously a term that he takes some pride...
Bridges perfectly captures the Dude's most essential quality: he's a happy man. No matter what insane complications the Coen brothers toss in his path, Bridges navigates his character through the knotty story with a remarkable laid back cool. He's so comfortable in this character that it's easy to forget that he's acting, even though it's not easy to pull off a performance as utterly nonchalant as this...
...figure out The Big Lebowski's loopy plot, but an even better time can be had just watching Bridges' character trying to make sense of the confusion. The plot of The Big Lebowski is a spin on a detective yarn, which begins when the Dude meets a cranky old rich man who also happens to share his name, Jeffrey Lebowski...
...henchmen looking to extort money from the more estimable of the two Mr. Lebowskis have accidentally searched out the Dude instead, and when the Dude proclaims his indifference to the whole situation, one of the goons pees on his rug. (No one said this movie is elegant...
...really the quest to reclaim his rug--which, he says, "really tied the room together"--that embroils the Dude in an unsavory kidnapping case which has absolutely nothing to do with...