Rat Race (2001)
Also known as "Course folle"
563 miles. 9 people. $2 million. 1001 problems!
Starring: John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, Lanei Chapman, Whoopi Goldberg, Cuba Gooding Jr., Seth Green, Wayne Knight, Jon Lovitz, Breckin Meyer, Amy Smart, Vince Vieluf, Dean Cain, Kathy Bates
Director: Jerry Zucker
Running Time: 112 minutes
US MPAA rating: N/AUK BBFC rating: 12
Adventure, Comedy
On DVD It's not often you find yourself wishing for an horrendous and preferably fatal road accident, but the thought most definitely popped into my head whilst watching 'Rat Race'.
This botched and cripplingly unfunny road movie brings together a platoon of Hollywood's most desperate, each one seemingly willing to do anything to make themselves popular again. Anything, that is, except make a decent movie.
John Cleese, who's in danger of becoming as big a sell-out merchant as any of them, plays a wealthy casino owner eager to give his filthy-rich clients some exciting new events to throw their dirty great wads of cash at. So he stuffs $2 million into a locker on the other side of the country, selects a group of randoms from his casino floor to go after it, and opens a book on who'll get there first.
Among the selected cretins chasing the loot are Whoopi Goldberg and Lanei Chapman as a mother-and-daughter team, Seth Green and Vince Vieluf as a pair of bungling brothers, Cuba Gooding Jr. as a nationally-despised football ref and Jon Lovitz as a pig-ignorant family man. Perhaps most irritating of the lot, however, is Rowan Atkinson with his portrayal of a narcoleptic Italian (it's a good job he eventually tells you what his nationality's supposed to be, because you certainly can't guess from the accent). A viewing of this, and of course 'Johnny English', can unfortunately lead to only one question - why has Atkinson stopped being funny? That you could watch three whole episodes of 'Blackadder' in the time spent taking in this drivel doesn't bear thinking about.
What really grates about 'Rat Race' isn't that it's a 'dumb' comedy - it's that it's picked the very worst aspects of all dumb comedies ever made and tried to piece together an entertaining end product out of it. Director Jerry Zucker is so busy throwing a seemingly endless line of supposedly hare-brained scenarios at us, that he doesn't stop to think what reasons there might be for finding these scenarios funny. It's like being shown a list of punchlines without knowing what the jokes are supposed to be that go before each one.
DVD Extras: 'The Making Of Rat Race', deleted scenes & out-takes, gag reel, interview with director Jerry Zucker & writer Andy Breckman, and a theatrical trailer.
It's Got: Journeyman rock band Smash Mouth taking part in what is a shockingly bad ending, even by the standards set by the previous 100 minutes.
It Needs: To be banned for attempting to set comedy back 20 years.
Alternatives: It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, The Cannonball Run, Road Trip
Summary: One long, drawn-out and not even accidentally funny mess.
Review by Gary Panton
Review Date: 24th September 2003
External Links
Official Web Site
Rat Race at the IMDB
Comments2 Comments |
| i disree, the cow scene had me laughing so hard i nearly wet my pants. |
| Comment by:- michael | | 19 October 2004 | ip: logged |
| yeah same here, this movie was halarious! |
| Comment by:- some dude | | 27 November 2004 | ip: logged |
