Ok, here's my list:

1. The Big Lebowski
2. Other Movies

I've wanted to write something about how much I love Lebowski since I first saw this thread, but I'm honestly at a loss to even describe it. Sure, it's hilarious, we all know that. It's got some of the funniest dialog ever. It also has better acting than just about any other comedy you could name. Sure, Goodman and Bridges are great in the lead rolls (Goodman is criminally underrated-- watch Barton Fink sometime.), but you've also got great actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Turturro absolutely KILLING in small parts. It's beautifully shot. It's got a fantastic soundtrack, not just because it has great songs but because the music is carefully chosen to underscore character. It's not just a great comedy, it's a great MOVIE, any way you want to look at it. And the more you watch it, the deeper the rabbit hole goes... here:

WHERE'S THE MONEY, LEBOWSKI? Let's start with Lebowski's brilliance as a detective story. Lebowski presents us with a Big Sleep-style mystery: What Happened To The Kidnapped Heiress? But the kidnapping plot, we eventually find, is a gigantic red herring. The real mystery in The Big Lebowski is Where's The Money? This is not an idle plot-point, it is a key subtext to understanding the importance of the movie. The kidnapped girl is a worthless idiot of importance to no one, but the money, ah, the money, as Mose in Hudsucker would say, "drives that ol' global economy and keeps big Daddy Earth a-spinnin' on 'roun'." The Big Lebowski is a social critique disguised as a mystery disguised as a stoner comedy.

The key to understanding the social dynamics of The Big Lebowski is to always follow the money. So where is "the money" in The Big Lebowski? ("Where's the money, Lebowski?" is, in fact, the movie's first line of dialogue.) The Dude doesn't have it -- he lives in a crappy Venice bungalow and is late on his rent. His friend Walter has his own business, but doesn't have any appreciable amount of it. Jeffrey Lebowski, despite appearances, doesn't have it, and his wife Bunny obviously doesn't have it. The Nihilists don't have it and neither does Larry Sellers, even though Walter is positive he has it.

The joke is, of course, that no one has it -- "the money" belonged to the first Mrs. Lebowski, who is long dead. We don't know how Mrs. Lebowski got her money -- "Capital," the source of "the money" in The Big Lebowski, is nebulous and taken for granted. "The Money" is like "The Gold" in Eric Von Stroheim's Greed -- it's not something to be earned, it's almost a natural resource, something that's just sitting around waiting for someone to figure out how to get it.

Who has any money in The Big Lebowski? Maud Lebowski, Jeffrey's daughter, the aggressively "feminist" artist, has some money, but even that is not hers, it's her mother's. She hasn't earned it and seems to be frittering it away on ugly art and an inane lifestyle (the other artist presented in Lebowski is The Dude's landlord, with his stupefying Greek Modern Dance routine -- art doesn't seem to count for much in the Lebowski universe). The only other wealthy personage in Lebowski is Jackie Treehorn, the pornographer. So: in the world of The Big Lebowski, "Money" is represented by an embezzler, an heir and a pornographer -- as harsh a critique of American capitalism as I've ever heard.

Everyone else is barely scraping by or actively losing money hand over fist. The indignities heaped upon The Dude in this narrative are great: his house is repeatedly broken into ("Hey, Man, this is a private residence" he lazily chides a trio of armed thugs), his possessions are smashed until nothing is left of them, his car is shot at, crashed, stolen, crashed again, peed in, bashed and finally set fire to. He is punched unconscious, drugged and hit with a coffee mug. The Rich in Lebowski get richer by soaking the Poor, and every transaction between social unequals is a heartbeat away from physical violence. Even Maud, who only wants her rug back, can't resist using force upon The Dude in order to get what she wants.

(The other thing Maud wants, of course, is to conceive a child. This is a succinct reversal of the argument of Raising Arizona. In the earlier movie, Ed reasoned that the Arizonas [The Rich] deserved to lose a child so that she [The Poor] could have one. In Lebowski, Maud [The Rich] assumes that it is her right to use The Dude [The Poor] as a method to get her own child -- in both movies, children are merely another expression of capital [or, as the Dude complains about pornographer Jackie Treehorn, "he treats objects as people, man.")

http://toddalcott.livejournal.com/151312.html


Something else I noticed:

Things seem to've worked out pretty good for the Dude'n Walter, and it was a purt good story, dontcha think? Made me laugh to beat the band. Parts, anyway. Course--I didn't like seein' Donny go. But then, happen to know that there's a little Lebowski on the way. I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' it-self, down through the generations, westward the wagons, across the sands a time until-- aw, look at me, I'm ramblin' again."

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning----

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

So yeah. Best comedy I've ever seen, and it's not a hard call. Second best is a hard call.

templeUsox wrote:

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I don't keep lists of these types of things and I don't feel like combing through imdb to figure out one. If you want to make a list of movies, I'll tell which ones I think are funnier. I'll say this, TBL is a better movie than it is a comedy.

Temple, I'm not trying to demand some type of meticulously ranked list of every movie you think is funnier. And, I'm not trying to argue that TBL is objectively better than every other comedy, I'm just saying that it's my favorite and trying to explain why. But, if you're going to tell me that I'm overrating it, it would be nice to know what a few of your favorites might be. If you must use a list, the AFI list at the start of the thread would seem a logical place to start.

I'd agree that TBL is a better movie than a comedy, but I think it's a great comedy.