Rat Race (2001)
DIRECTOR: Jerry Zucker
CAST: Breckin Meyer, Rowan Atkinson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jon Lovitz, Whoopi Goldberg, Seth Green, Lanei Chapman, Amy Smart, Vince Vieluf, John Cleese, Kathy Najimy, Wayne Knight, Dave Thomas
REVIEW:
Rat Race, a throwback to screwball chase comedies like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, is not a great comedy, but it’s a hard-working, fast-paced, sometimes creatively zany one that serves up a reasonably steady supply of laughs until running out of gas at the finish line. Jerry Zucker (Airplane, Naked Gun) hasn’t delivered a comedy classic, but it’s an entertaining enough diversion.
The set-up is simple enough. Eccentric billionaire Donald Sinclair (John Cleese), for the amusement of his high-rolling gambling addict cohorts, has assembled eight people chosen at random in his Las Vegas casino: mild-mannered strait-laced young lawyer Nick Schaffer (Breckin Meyer), disgraced football referee Owen Templeton (Cuba Gooding Jr.), recently reunited mother-daughter duo Vera Baker (Whoopi Goldberg) and her high-strung corporate executive offspring Merrill Jennings (Lanei Chapman), small-time con artist Duane Cody (Seth Green) and his dim-bulb brother Blaine (Vince Vieluf), penny-pinching Randy Pear (Jon Lovitz), who’s on a family vacation with his wife (Kathy Najimy) and kids, and eccentric Italian immigrant Enrico Pollini (Rowan Atkinson). The game: a race to Silver City, New Mexico. The prize: $2 million. The only rule: there are no rules. Thus commences a madcap six-way race, with Nick, Owen, Vera/Merrill, Duane/Blaine, Randy, and Enrico all setting out, on foot, on horseback, in helicopters, and any other way they stumble across, toward Silver City.
Needless to say, the joy in this kind of movie is in the journey, not the destination, and following our bumbling ensemble and all the bizarre situations they get themselves into en route to Silver City. Nick gets a lift from a cute helicopter pilot (Amy Smart). Owen gets stranded in the desert by a disgruntled cabbie (Paul Rodriguez), but later impersonates a bus driver for an I Love Lucy convention. Vera and Merrill end up stealing a rocket car. Narcoleptic Enrico gets put out of commission when he falls asleep before he makes it out of the hotel lobby, but later gets a ride from an ambulance driver (Wayne Knight) transporting a heart to El Paso. The most creative mishaps befall Randy and family, who wind up visiting The Barbie Museum (which is not what they might have imagined) and driving a swastika-adorned Mercedes that once belonged to Hitler (the resolution of this episode is one of the movie’s biggest laugh-out-loud hilarious moments), and the less-than-brilliant duo of Duane and Blaine, who have a mishap with a radar tower and go airborne in a hot air balloon (along with an unhappy cow).
Some of the comedy is hit-and-miss, as is the ensemble cast’s comedic talents. Comedy veterans Jon Lovitz and John Cleese are consistently amusing, though some of Cleese’s laughs come from the oversized false teeth he flashes at every opportunity. Rowan Atkinson, popular in Britain as “Mr. Bean”, gets laughs out of some Mr. Bean-esque goofy expressions and a garbled accent. Seth Green individually is more amusing than Vince Vieluf, but the two get into some of the most elaborately-orchestrated misadventures in the movie. Breckin Meyer is likable enough as the mostly “straight man” (as his traveling companion/love interest, Amy Smart seems pretty normal too until going berserk on her cheating boyfriend and chasing him down the road in a helicopter). On the other hand, Cuba Gooding Jr.’s overacted mugging for the camera feels try-hard and amateurish and his scenes are more often tiresome than amusing. Some of the comedy feels like more effort was put into it than others, with lazy laughs from Atkinson throwing in some Mr. Bean shtick, Cuba Gooding Jr. flailing around, and Seth Green getting thrown up on by a cow, versus the step-by-step buildup of more complicated bits like Duane’s jeep getting dragged up the side of a radar tower, and the series of mishaps that result in Jon Lovitz ending up onstage in front of an audience of unamused WWII veterans with a swastika-adorned Mercedes and a Hitler mustache. Kathy Bates has a mildly amusing cameo as a folksy lady trying to sell pet squirrels, which has a punchline twenty minutes down the road (there’s other cameos from Dean Cain and a self-parodying Gloria Allred). There’s also amusing throwaway side bits involving Sinclar’s personality-deficient lawyer (Dave Thomas) and his gambling addict cohorts, who place wagers constantly on, among other things, which maid can hang from the curtains the longest, who loses their lunch first in a rocking plane ride, and how much a prostitute might charge for a list of bizarre requests.
Some bits are more tiresome than amusing—especially centering around Owen—but the pace zips along at enough of a rapid-fire clip, careening blithely from one bizarre situation to another, that Rat Race scurries along on its merry way until the bottom falls out in the last five-ten minutes. It might be inevitable in this kind of movie that the journey is more fun than the destination, but not only does Rat Race not seem to know how to end, it falls back on cloying sentimentality that brings the humor to a screeching halt. It’s a little disappointing, after some of the creative shenanigans that screenwriter Amy Breckman comes up with, that she and Zucker couldn’t come up with an ending that maintains its madcap zaniness, and even more disappointing that they descend into such mawkishness in the process.
Rat Race‘s sorry whimper of an ending leaves a bad aftertaste, but up until then it serves up enough fast-paced zany shenanigans to be a mostly entertaining diversion up to that point. But one feels, with a little more effort, it might have been a stronger, more clever entry in the comedy genre. Even so, it serves up some laugh-out-loud hilarious moments, and that’s more than you can get from some so-called comedies.
* * 1/2