re: The Big Lebowski - Maybe Spoilers

every time someone starts this thread they admit they havent watched it more than once. every single time. it never fails.

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The movie doesn't point this out. It let's you "catch" it and when you do, it cracks you up.

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Well said...that's why I love it so much.

The problem is, the humor is too "smart" for anyone really. The only way to understand it is to watch the movie over and over. Every rewatxh you learn new phrases/words and their meaning and subsequently gain new laughs in their usage.

I've never met anyone who didn't laugh more withe every rewatch

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I do not get how this film has become cult favorite

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It became a cult favorite for the very reason that you see the dissension in this thread to your OP. Most people, like you, saw it for the first time and thought it was, to put it in the parlance of our times, "meh." But some saw it the first time and recognized a lot of the subtleties that exist in the movie and told their friends about it.

When it came out on video/dvd, people could watch it multiple times and pick up on the nuances of each scene (like how Brant reacts to Bunny saying she'll suck the Dude's cock for a thousand dollars... Brant can't watch, though, or he has to pay a hundred, and then the Dude's little quip as Brant is dragging him away from Bunny, "Uhhh... I'm just gonna go find a cash machine.") If you aren't paying much attention to the movie, you miss things like that. That scene is top-to-bottom hilarious and gets funnier with each viewing, from the Nihilist passed out in the pool with a bottle of Jack, to Brant's awkward interactions with Bunny and the Dude.

So, as with a lot of movies that can't truly be appreciated upon initial viewing unless you are really paying attention, it became a cult classic. The hilarity is not in your face. It is subtle. It is often delivered in a deadpan manner. The scene where the Dude's house gets broken into at the beginning of the movie and he's getting drowned in his own toilet ("Where's the money, Lebowski!?" "It's down there somewhere, let me take another look.") is a prime example. When the porn star pulls out the Dude's bowling ball and asks, "What the frick is this?" and the Dude's response is to look at him as if he's a moron and say, "Obviously, you're not a golfer." It's all very clever.

And clever humor is difficult to pick up on with one viewing.

And then the Dude cranks it back in the old school Lazy Boy with the footrest clicking on the way up...that scene gets me too.

Another scene that cracks me up, "so how's the smut business Jackie?"

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This thread makes me want to watch it again.

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Ditto. Gonna watch it tonight.

Mind if I do a J?

Who the frick are you?

I'm a friend of Maudi's...

Yeah, another friend with a cleft a-hole?

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There are little phrases throughout the movie ("this aggression will not stand" "in the parlance of our times", etc.). The Dude hears them from someone, doesn't quite understand them, and repeats them later in the movie. 

The movie doesn't point this out. It let's you "catch" it and when you do, it cracks you up. 

It's a different kind of humor

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Everytime I watch that movie I catch another line early in the movie that gets reused.

favorite is when he says Sometimes you eat the bar and the narrator is sitting there. Like that narrator has been telling this story because he had just been sitting in they bowling ally everyday watching dude donny and walter. Think about it. They say everything that happens in the movie in that bowling alley.

When I figured that out I loved the movie so much more