The Big Lebowski

Dude.

The Big Lebowski  is a stoner movie, which means you either need to be a sixteen year old or a stoned 35 year old to enjoy it.  At my advanced age, it’s not cool to hang out with sixteen year old boys, and my stoner neighbor got arrested recently, so I’m forced to fall back on my own counsel.  My counsel says that this movie sucks.  Everybody in the movie is an idiot, and do a bunch of idiotic things while non-sequitors circle them like stoned vultures.  Rather than being funny, the movie settles for being weird and off-putting.

The main character has a name, but prefers to go by the name “the Dude.”  Every character in the movie talks about how inspiring it is that he’s so relaxed (stoned), but he spends the entire movie freaking out about one thing after another.  I’m more chill than he is, and I just slapped a hobo because I ran out of toothpaste.  His crazy friend is more fun, and also gets to live out a fantasy of mine by telling Steve Buscemi to shut up every time he opens the misshapen teeth-lined maw he calls a mouth.

There’s a lot of time spent in a bowling alley, so we see a ridiculous amount of footage of the camera rolling down the alley, rolling through the ball return, and hanging out inside the ball itself.  My best guess is someone made a student film showing off how clever he was with bowling ball metaphors and some movie dude did another line of cocaine and said, “This is awesome!  Make it 117 minutes long!”  Struggling to pad the run time, he made the characters repeat every line of dialogue 17 times like a stuttering West Wing parody.  There are only a dozen unique lines of dialog in the movie, probably even less if you remove all the times they say “dude.”

Rating: Musty

Did I fast forward: Yes

The General

Trains as far as the eye can see.

According to 501 Must-See Movies, The General is Buster Keaton’s finest work.  Having not seen any other Buster Keaton movies, and only having a vague idea of who he is based on Roger Ebert comparing him to Jackie Chan, I cannot really say if that is the case.  I can, however, say two things:

1. Dude likes his trains.

2. I’d rather watch The Medallion than watch any more Buster Keaton movies.

I’m sure that, for the 20’s, this movie was hilarious.  However comedy doesn’t transfer across generations very well, so we’re left with a bunch of people making silly exaggerated faces while riding on trains.  There is a lot of train riding in this movie.  It’s like 80% trains, and 20% Confederate Army propaganda. 

See, Buster wants to join the Rebels, but can’t because he has to drive a train.  He has to save the day and the girl when some Yankees steal his train.  This primarily involves throwing things on the track to slow down one train or another for an agonizingly long period of time.  Buster’s known for a brand of physical comedy not unlike Jackie Chan’s, but there’s very little of that in this movie.  But Sweet Moses, there’s a lot of trains.

Rating: Musty

Did I fast forward: Only through the train parts.