This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Dan, Reegs and Cris review The Big Lebowski, the Coen brothers’ 1998 Los Angeles stoner-noir starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Turturro, Tara Reid, Peter Stormare, David Thewlis, Flea and Sam Elliott.
Bowling-adjacent week two kicks off with Sidey putting the film straight into his all-time top five before anyone has said a word. The dads frame it up as a Chandler-with-a-stoner love letter dropped into Los Angeles, with every character modelled on real people the Coens knew — Jeff Dowd as The Dude, John Milius as Walter — and every scene operating in a slightly different genre to the one before it.
Reegs and Sidey walk the opening: the tumbleweed, Sam Elliott’s cowboy voiceover, The Dude’s 69-cent half-and-half cheque dated September 11th 1991 in Gulf War Los Angeles, the two goons who break in, give him a bog wash looking for a different Lebowski’s money, and piss on the rug that really tied the room together.
From there it is straight into the bowling alley to meet Walter and Donny: Walter the Vietnam-vet, Judaism-converted rage monster who turns up with his ex-wife’s Pomeranian and pulls a revolver on long-haired pacifist Smokey over a line-foul call, and Donny the sweet, confused Steve Buscemi who keeps getting told to shut the fuck up. The dads trace the whole plot engine out of Walter’s decision that they should go and shake down the other, millionaire Lebowski in his mansion.
At the mansion the dads celebrate Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Brandt — the nervous laugh, the obsequious energy, the “Little Lebowski Urban Achievers”, the arms-up-at-right-angles stance Reegs still does when he is showing people around a room — and the Big Lebowski himself, a Logan-Roy-style tycoon in a wheelchair who despises The Dude on sight. There is the rug swap, the Tara Reid toe-painting / cock-sucking offer, and the first glimpse of Peter Stormare as Uli the nihilist by the pool.
Then it is full Coen chaos. The dads walk the dream sequence through the city, Julianne Moore’s Maude on a flying harness delivering strongly-vaginal paintings, Walter’s dirty-underwear ringer getting hurled out of the car in place of a million dollars, Jesus Quintana in his purple all-in-one licking the ball while the Gypsy Kings’ Hotel California plays, The Dude’s stolen car and Creedence tapes, Walter dressing up as a policeman and smashing a stranger’s Corvette with a crowbar while shouting about strangers’ asses (dubbed on the airline as “strangers in the Alps”), the marmot-that-is-actually-a-ferret in the bath, the arrival of the green-polished toe, Jackie Treehorn’s drug, the full Busby Berkeley bowling-musical “see what condition my condition was in” dream, the mug off the forehead in Malibu, and Maude turning up in a dressing gown with an extremely specific plan to get pregnant.
The dads single out two scenes. First, Walter smashing the wrong car outside Larry Sellers’s house, with the writer of 153 episodes of Branded sitting in an iron lung in the front room. Second, Donny’s death — the nihilist showdown outside the alley with the bitten ear and the bowling-ball groin shot, the modestly priced receptacle, the coffee-tin eulogy on the Pismo cliff that detours uncontrollably into Vietnam, the wind changing and depositing every ash into The Dude’s face and sunglasses, and John Goodman’s shoulders slumping like a child’s for a hug from his friend.
It drifts, deliberately, back to the bowling alley where The Dude will abide. Sam Elliott’s cowboy signs it off, there is going to be a little Lebowski on the way, and the dads tangent happily into twenty-plus years of Lebowski Fest, Iron Lung costumes, Jeff Bridges turning up in character for his Hall of Fame star, the jelly shoes and the big cardigan being his own clothes, and where the film sits in the Coens’ run alongside Blood Simple, Barton Fink, Hudsucker Proxy and Fargo.
Then the honest verdicts. Sidey keeps it in his all-time top five, with John Goodman’s Walter as a performance for the ages and the film that opened his eyes in 1998 to a world of cinema outside the blockbuster. Dan calls it a Stonewall classic he will watch and recommend as long as he watches movies, up there with Withnail and I for rewatch-and-quote energy. Reegs gives it “the strongest recommend I possibly can recommend.” Cris, watching it for the first time, loves John Turturro above all else, loved the gun-pull on Smokey, found parts of it tiring without subtitles, decided the Donny gag was done for him after one scene, and makes the sharp point that any 30-year-old mega-cult film comes to a first-time 2026 viewer slightly over-hyped. Bowling verdicts: strike from Dan, strongest-possible recommend from Reegs, personal top-five lock from Sidey, good-not-great from Cris, Turturro MVP from everyone.
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