In the very different town of Los Angeles, the Coens turn a more benign eye toward the modest dreams of a man whose glory days are long past. The Big Lebowski is the opposite of Fargo in many ways--it's a loud, crowded comedy rather than a spare tragedy. But the most important difference is in its hero, The Dude, an aging hippie who's redeemed to his creators by his very lack of ambition. His story may be less momentous than Lundegaard's, but the grace of The Big Lebowski is simply that it has found a teller, someone who sees in this bumbling, accidental hero the right man for a singular--if poorly defined--job.

There's no reason to expect The Big Lebowski to repeat the stark emotional resonance and shocking humor of Fargo, if only because the Coens seldom repeat themselves. The surprise is that they've turned a script based on slapstick, stoners, and screwball dialogue into a soft-hearted love letter to The Dude. Stylistically excessive, pointlessly plotted, and riotously funny, The Big Lebowski generates huge belly laughs, but it also pricks an unexpected emotional core by communicating the Coens' affection for their hapless misfit protagonist.

Jeff Bridges gloriously lets himself go as The Dude--n Jeffrey Lebowski--who is mistaken by some unorthodox bill collectors for a crippled millionaire with the same name. Hoping to be compensated for the thugs' destruction of a rug that "really tied the room together," The Dude visits the millionaire (played by David Huddleston) and is summarily dismissed. But when the rich Lebowski's young, nymphomaniacal wife is kidnapped, The Dude gets tapped to deliver the ransom. His involvement leads to meetings with other interested parties: Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore), an avant-garde feminist artist who unnerves The Dude with frank talk about sex; a defunct '80s German techno-pop band called Autobahn (led by Peter Stormare), whose members are now all practicing nihilists; and Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara), a porno producer who once featured the present Mrs. Lebowski in a film called Logjammin'.

In between getting beaten up by various members of these factions, The Dude bowls. His league bowling team, too disorganized to have a name or customized shirts, includes Walter (John Goodman), a Vietnam vet whose every interest quickly becomes a dangerous obsession, and Donny (Steve Buscemi), a retiring youngster who, alone among the group, really seems to enjoy bowling. Meanwhile, the league championships are coming up, and the team's closest rival is led by a flamboyant Hispanic pederast (John Turturro).
In the grand tradition of shaggy-dog plots, not much is actually resolved when the movie ends. But during The Dude's desultory hunt for the truth about the kidnapping and the missing ransom, he gets to be an important guy for the first time since his protest days in the "Seattle Seven." Like countless detectives in novels and noirs before him, he lets the plotters and victims try to enlist him on their side, until, inevitably, the sides change places and the truth comes out. A balding shamus follows The Dude around in a Volkswagen admiring his skill at playing one side against the other; except, of course, The Dude's not a detective, and he has no plan. His pot-addled brain is too slow for any pretense of skill, leaving him babbling hesitantly about "the complexities" and "the facets." Whatever success he achieves is the result of his foes' overestimation of him. Even so, his creators don't judge him; they celebrate his happy accidents.