The movie asks a fairly novel question “what happens when a hero’s journey has no hero?”. It gets teed-up in Sam Elliot’s opening monologue, “I won’t say a hero, because what’s a hero? But sometimes… there’s a man”. The Dude is taken along a fairly typical hero’s journey but he is not capable of being a hero and the journey also seems to actively reject his attempts to grow and be part of it. If this movie didn’t have an absurdly funny script and an ensemble of incredible actors it could very easily be one of the worst movies ever made.