BEFORE: Bobby Cannavale carries over from "Thunder Force", and I've got another rare and unexpected Birthday SHOUT-out today to Sonia Braga. I know that's it's largely random when I land a film on an actor's birthday, but I also sort of take it as a little sign from the universe that my plan is solid, and I'm somehow right where I'm supposed to be. With the career part of my life in flux right now, that's at least a small bit of imaginary comfort.
THE PLOT: A trio of misfits whose irreverent, sexually charged dynamic evolves into a surprising love story as their spontaneous and flippant attitude towards the past or future backfires time and again.
AFTER: OK, so if you say there's a sequel to "The Big Lebowski", well, you've got my attention. And this one sort of slipped into existence late in 2019, which was pre-pandemic, but did it even get released in theaters? I'm not sure - but that's NOT a good sign. Wikipedia's telling me it was released in the U.S. in late February 2020, which was horrible timing, but there's NO box office data - that's an even worse sign.
Somehow this is an unofficial sequel, which is a third bad sign - John Turturro got permission from the Coen Brothers to re-use his "Lebowski" character, Jesus Quintana, who admittedly tore up the screen during the five minutes the Coens gave him, which some intense bowling moves and character quirks, like when he licked that bowling ball (ewww?) and then had an intense conversation with John Goodman about the upcoming match. But without the involvement of the Coen Brothers, this can't really be a valid corner of the Lebowski-verse, can it? Without the same writers, the same directors, can someone really catch lightning in a bottle on the second try, and match the magic that the character once had? Well, no.
Essentially, this is "Solo: A Star Wars Story", taking one character from a well-known franchise and spinning him off into his own movie, and it's going to be all-new while also feeling familiar at the same time. Only Jesus Quintana wasn't the Han Solo of the Lebowski-verse, he wasn't even the Boba Fett or the Lando, he was more like Bossk, or maybe Lobot - in that he's on-screen for a couple minutes, he's got something important to do to help or hinder the main characters, and then he's gone. Maybe he made an impact on you in those five minutes, but does THAT, in itself, warrant a whole new movie? No, it does not. What happened to Lobot after "The Empire Strikes Back"? Even for "Star Wars" fans, the correct answer is, "Who cares?" Maybe he'll make an appearance in the "Star Wars" comic or one of the novels, but for the most part, he's done, and this is the way it should be.
Turturro obviously had a blast playing Jesus in "Lebowski", so I guess he just figured there'd be something there. Well, you have to PUT something there in order for there to BE something there, and mostly this film avoids any real story points that we can hang a narrative on. Jesus gets out of jail, hooks up with his old friend Petey, and they go on a road-trip, stealing cars, meeting new people, having sexual encounters, and that's mostly it. THAT'S IT? OK, there's a little bit of bowling, but it's a lot like his bowling scene in the original film, he even licks the ball the same way. (Again, ewww...). This film could have gone in any of a dozen different directions, Jesus could have embarked on a professional bowling career, for example. He could have robbed banks, he could have formed a band, he could have run a motel or searched for buried treasure. But no, he and his friend just want to steal cars and have sex, and I'm thinking that just does not justify a movie. The storyline allegedly comes from adapting a French film "Les Valseuses" (which means "the testicles") but was called "Going Places" in English markets.
The point is that Jesus was meant to be a supporting character, not a headliner, and this kind of proves that's all he was ever supposed to be, he didn't even draw my attention when he was the centerpiece of the story. Maybe it's me, maybe I'm too caught up in my own personal drama right now to care about somebody else's. But I'm trying to find the point of all this today, and I can't seem to do that. Driving around upstate New York (or perhaps it's Long Island) aimlessly stealing cars just seems like a complete waste of time, and the encounters Jesus and Petey have with random strangers don't seem to amount to much either, and that's by design. For what purpose, though? Is it all good or bad? Who can even say in the end?
Also, so much talent is wasted here. Christopher Walken is on-screen for five minutes (at most) as the prison warden, but they just didn't give him anything to DO, it's like somebody forgot to write that scene or something. Same goes for Jesus and Petey's encounter with the nursing mother - it goes simply nowhere, so why is the scene even THERE? Same goes for the security guard protecting the 99-cent store, the mechanic and even the doctor's wife.
At least all the weirdness in "The Big Lebowski" added up to something in the end. Right? There's no resolution here, not really, the film just sort of STOPS rather than ends. The main characters have been chased by police throughout the whole film, and I think they're still wanted at the end, so what gives? You can sense the ways they tried to emulate the FEEL of a Coen Brothers movie, but it just didn't come close. The structure actually reminds me of "The Blues Brothers", only without any of that film's charms, either. Instead there's so much rambling that the end credits came as something of a relief, we could all stop getting nowhere, at least. People are going to drift in and out of our lives as we all travel down that road, but that's all I got from the film - plus, we all KNEW that already.
Also starring John Turturro (last seen in "Rio, I Love You"), Audrey Tautou, Pete Davidson (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"), Jon Hamm (last seen in "Lucy in the Sky"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Sonia Braga (last seen in "Wonder"), Christopher Walken (last seen in "Nick of Time"), Gloria Reuben (ditto), J.B. Smoove (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "The Hustle"), Michael Badalucco (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Sable Boykin, Margaret Reed, Nicolas Reyes, Tonino Ballardo
RATING: 4 out of 10 gas station convenience stores
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