To answer this question, philosophers came up with various criteria of what constitutes humor. One such explanation is the incongruity theory in which humor arises from the difference between the expected and what actually happens, as well as the distance between the two. This can be seen as a major driving force in The Big Lebowski, especially because the very premise is based around Lebowski being targeted while really not having done anything to deserve his treatment. For example, Lebowski is just a guy who likes to lounge around in his robe and drink white russians, but then random people show up to his house, beat the crap out of him, and hold his head underwater in the toilet. The incongruity between Lebowski "the dude's" lifestyle and his collectors is what creates the humor.
Another theory about what makes up humor is that it is based off of a superiority complex that the viewer gets over the characters. This is even more readily apparent in The Big Lebowski, because the main character and his friends are all pretty messed up in their own way. Lebowski himself is just kind of a bum, and his friend has anger issues. The other characters, too, are stricken with vice, and so while watching the movie the viewer can bask in a superiority complex over every character, and laugh at the absurd situations that stem from the character's lack of integrity.
But these are just theories, because humor is really not something we can clarify like words. Unlike most things we experience, it doesn't follow any sort of real logic, and so we must resort to more abstract ideas to get a reading on it. If you look though, there are patterns that can be gleaned from what we find funny or not funny, and so generalizations leave us still quite confident we know the basics of what's behind humor.
Good post, I liked that you brought up the incongruity theory because I think it does indeed have much to do with what we find funny. And you're right that humor is something we can all identify but have a harder time describing, especially when we are trying to identify why an individual might not think something is as funny as we do. For me (and there is definitely this truth in the Hangover and the Big Lebowski) its funny when something happens to characters that we know is preposterous: but not too preposterous. If it is too much so, the movie and the humor experience loses all credibility and we won't laugh.
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