The Big Lebowski 1998

Susan Stark, Detroit News: Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: 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. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: 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. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: A typical Coen brothers film is like no film you've ever seen. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: 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. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: [The Coens] rummaged through political and personal history for the underpinnings of this Los Angeles caper, from 1998, sending up, with rueful astonishment, the American way of war. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: 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. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The Big Lebowski is a mess. But what a glorious, wonderfully-entertaining mess it is. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: It's weirdly engaging, like its hero. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: A genial spoof about life on the unhinged margins of L.A. that's a lot more carefully constructed than it pretends to be. Read more

Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle: 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. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: 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. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Adds up to considerably less than the sum of its often scintillating parts. Read more