And their movie has THE BIG LEBOWSKI Starring Jeff Bridges, John Turturro, John Goodman, Julianne Moore and Steve Buscemi. 14A. KATHERINE MONK SUN MOVIE CRITIC No matter how many weak points there may be in a Coen brothers movie, you can always depend on a moment of absolute hilarity and human compassion to redeem the experience. The Coens, heirs to Oscar expectations in the wake of Fargo, have a gift for gently peeling back layer after layer of cultural baggage to reveal the true nature of their characters, showing us just how screwed up we walking sacks of water really are. In The Big Lebowski, the main character thus exposed is the Dude, played with stumbling finesse by a rather paunchy Jeff Bridges. The Dude is a free spirit living on White Russians, pot and bowling in the strip-mall emptiness of Venice, Calif. While predictable and verging on complete pathos, his life is good. He is one of life's truly happy under- some great moments achievers who hates surprises and seeks little more than a baseline existence bathed in Kahlua, cream and vodka. He is not your typical thriller protagonist, and therein lies the beauty of The Big Lebowski life never turns out the way you think it will. One day, the Dude, who is known to the state as Jeff Lebowski, is mistaken for another Jeff Lebowski a very, very rich Lebowski by a bunch of German dolts looking to cash in on a kidnapping of the Big Lebowski's wife, Bunny. The Dude becomes the point-man in the ransom exchange and as in all plots configured by the Coens things go very much awry from the beginning. We Coen brothers fans wait for these delicate and intelligently structured moments of absolute chaos as they magically fuse the mundane and the surreal. Sadly, these are the weakest moments in The Big Lebowski as the brothers stumble in their timing and fail to make the whole human joke work. But the movie does have its moments of complete and utter hilarity. They come via SEE
