10 Righteous Heirs to ‘The Big Lebowski’

Two decades have passed since Joel and Ethan Coen introduced the world to the White Russian-slugging Jeffrey Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) — better known as the Dude — and the hair-trigger Vietnam vet Walter Sobchak (John Goodman). And in that time, “The Big Lebowski” has become a dorm-room staple, inspired an annual festival and spawned a pseudo-religion called Dudeism. A clever riff on the gumshoe fiction of Raymond Chandler, “Lebowski” made its widespread theatrical debut 20 years ago on March 6, and although the academy has certainly favored the Coens’ more serious films, nothing has compared in terms of cultural impact.

While wandering the offices of the other Jeffrey Lebowski, the Dude notices a plaque dedicated to a children’s charity called the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers; so, too, are the annals of cinema full of Little Lebowskis — movies that seem to take cues from the philosophy and style of the Coens brothers’ film. Much of “Lebowski” concerns the Dude’s reproductive fertility, and true to form, he has cinematic children scattered all over. Below, we’ve identified 10 Little Lebowskis that are available to stream. Watch them all — “if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.”

If You Miss the Hippie-Slacker California:

This 2014 SoCal noir from Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the book by Thomas Pynchon, is set in the fictitious shoreside enclave of Gordita Beach in 1970, an exceedingly chilled-out community not too far removed from the oddball Los Angeles fringes later frequented by the Dude. A live-and-let-live hippie spirit links the Coens’ Southern California of the ‘90s with Anderson’s version of the ‘70s: As the spacey investigator Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) untangles a vast conspiracy, he encounters many like-minded burnouts who want nothing more than to kick back, smoke some dope and wax rhapsodical. One easily imagines a younger Dude wandering through a demonstration staged by the radicalized surf-rock saxophonist in " Vice,” Coy Harlingen (Owen Wilson).

If You Miss the Seedier California:

Expand the interlude at pornographer Jackie Treehorn’s hedonistic beach soiree into a feature length film, and it would be something like this agreeably sleazy neo-noir from Shane Black. Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe portray two mismatched investigators who clear a brutal swath through the adult film industry of 1970s Los Angeles in pursuit of a missing teenage girl — a milieu teeming with the type of scheming lowlifes who make patsies out of the Dude and Walter a few decades later. The Dude stumbles into this same surreal Hollywood underbelly and immediately wants to find an ATM. Black gleefully embraces it as well, with his aesthetic of pool parties, hillside mansions and chintzy baroque decadence. But he takes it a few shades darker.

If You Like Stoner Humor:

Both the Dude and Dale (Seth Rogen), the unmotivated process server stumbling his way through this brilliantly dimwitted farce from David Gordon Green, share a predilection for a certain kind of all-natural relaxation. But cannabis proves a fickle mistress for both men, leaving them slow on the uptake when they’re thrust into high-pressure situations. In Dale’s case, he endures a nightlong freakout after getting an eyeful of a mob murder, sending him and his volatile dealer, Saul (James Franco), on a mad scramble for their lives. Both films are keyed into a haziness of form that reflects its characters’ favorite vice, with one scene melting into the next. Viewers may end up at some new juncture with little understanding of how they arrived — but happy to be there.

If You Want Another Coen-Bridges Collaboration:

After creating the Dude, Jeff Bridges and the Coen brothers went their separate ways until 2010, when they reinterpreted the esteemed cowboy novel from Charles Portis (and not, they’ll have you know, the 1969 film starring John Wayne). There’s a knowing Dude-ness about Bridges’ rendition of the loutish, eyepatch-wearing lawman Rooster Cogburn. He agrees to escort young Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) on her search for her father’s killer, but he’d rather spend his days puffing on his corncob pipe and slugging moonshine — the Old West version of the layabout individualism in “Lebowski.” Ultimately, the Dude and Cogburn share a notion of duty, whether that means bringing a murderer to the gallows or ensuring that two rug-ruining thugs get their just deserts.

If You Liked the Slant on Film Noir:

The Coen brothers transplanted stock elements of film noir — the femme fatale, the double-cross, the red herring, the sweeping conspiracy — from the dank alleyways of the ‘40s to palm trees and strip malls of the ‘90s for “Lebowski.” Rian Johnson’s breakout debut, “Brick,” moves the same conventions into high school, where a bookish student named Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) tries to find his missing ex-girlfriend. Johnson’s script has fun with the tough-guy language of Dashiell Hammett’s private eyes, updating it to resemble more closely teen slang. The actors are young, but the perilous stakes and bruised cynicism are decidedly grown-up; the film chews Brendan up and spits him out, giving a hard-boiled edge to the usual coming-of-age narrative.

If You Want Another Bumbling Crime Yarn:

Incompetence fuels the comic engine that makes ‘Lebowski’ so entertaining; it wouldn’t be as fun if the Dude had even the slightest clue how to handle a hostage negotiation. Likewise, the assistant nurse in this film (Melanie Lynskey) doesn’t let her lack of experience stop her from taking the law into her own hands after her apartment gets ransacked. Undaunted, she teams up with her unstable, nunchuck-wielding neighbor (Elijah Wood) and promptly gets in way over her head with a cadre of local criminals who have no intention of taking it easy on her. As in “Lebowski,” the collision of poorly considered amateur heroics and the violent realities of criminal life makes for a potent combination of humor and brutality.

If You’re Searching for the Dude’s Closest Descendant:

The Dude is a humble creature of habit — most days he drinks the same cocktail, goes to the same bowling alley, wears the same sweater-robe. Paterson, the protagonist of Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson,” adheres to a similarly rigid routine: Each day, he drives his bus route through Paterson, New Jersey, dotes on his wife (Golshifteh Farahani), feeds their dog and treats himself to a single beer. Adam Driver took more than a few strands of the Dude’s DNA when creating this soulful blue-collar poet, imbuing him with a quiet, Zenlike wisdom and a contentment with his lot in life. Both films test the happy stasis these kindred spirits enjoy, breaking their routines and watching as they adapt to new responsibilities. (Paterson has a slightly easier time; his predicaments don’t involve German nihilists.)

If You Like the Layered Weirdness:

One reason the “Lebowski” fan base is so vast and intense is the Coens’ symbol-laden approach. It’s good sport obsessing over the Dude’s journey as a revision of the Western, or as a thinly veiled commentary on U.S. foreign policy, or as a surrealist parable about masculine anxiety. This feature debut from director Spike Jonze and its ingenious premise — What if crawling into a mysterious portal put you inside actor John Malkovich’s head for 15 minutes? — also provides fertile ground for multiple readings. Equal parts rom-com, corporate thriller and heady psychological experiment, the dense script, written by Charlie Kaufman (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”), draws from Freud and Jung, transgender theory and numerology, arcana and myth.

If You Loved the Unlikely Criminals:

Walter has experience in war, but he’s still hilariously ill-equipped for an operation as delicate as a ransom handoff. The characters in this heist film from Steven Soderbergh, set in North Carolina, are the inverse: outwardly unskilled hayseeds who execute a complicated theft with finesse. A motley crew of rural types (a strong ensemble including Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Riley Keough and Daniel Craig) pool their wits to rip off the Charlotte Motor Speedway during the year’s biggest NASCAR race, each character contributing special skills or knowledge. Soderbergh mines no shortage of levity from the Southern eccentricities of the characters — the feral twins Fish and Sam could have stumbled in from a Coens film — but their talents always command a measure of respect.

If You’re Into Dark Humor:

“Lebowski” isn’t shy about gallows humor: a gust of wind blows a cremated friend’s remains into the Dude’s face; a severed toe disrupts coffee at a “family restaurant.” This rip-roaring crime comedy from Martin McDonagh extends that impulse to the extreme, using gunshots the way other films use jokes. An Irish hit man and his protégé (Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell) cool their heels in Belgium after a killing goes slightly awry, although trouble soon finds them, along with a body count of Shakespearean proportions. McDonagh’s dialogue freely commingles wry knucklehead wit with fatalist musings on mortality and the Great Beyond. Not unlike the Dude, this film has a casual profundity, dropping kernels of insight as frequently as F-bombs.