Oh my god, another one? Lets get ready to Tap Dance... Jerry Zucker has, for years, made a career out of making zany, silly comedies and parody films. Films such as The Naked Gun, Top Secret!, and especially Airplane! have cemented him into the comedic pop culture zeitgeist. So which one of films am I discussing here? None other than his Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World themed spoof Rat Race about a group of people who engage in a preposterous and often hysterical race to Silver City, New Mexico, to claim a suitcase filled with 2 million dollars, while being monitored and bet upon by a Las Vegas tycoon (Played by Monty Pythons own, John Cleese). Will they make it to their fortunes and who will win the rat race to the cash? The answer will have you in stitches for many multiple viewings. THE STORY: A group of people vacationing in Las Vegas, including Nick Schaeffer (Played by Breckin Meyer, Jon Arbunkle from the Garfield movies), a life fearing and risk avoiding young man who is in Vegas to attend a friends bachelor party, Owen Templeton (Played by Cuba Gooding Jr., Best Supporting Actor Winner for Jerry Maguire, Radio), a professional football referee who is taking a lot of heat in the media for a bad call, Blaine and Duane Cody (Played by Seth Green, Robot Chicken, Family Guy, as Duane and Vince Vieluf, Grind, as Blaine), a pair of con artist brothers, Vera Baker (Played by Whoopi Goldberg, Ghost, Sister Act), a woman in Vegas meeting the daughter Merrill Jennings (Lanei Chapman) she gave up for adoption in her youth, Randy Pear (Played by Jon Lovitz, Saturday Night Live), a husband and father who is constantly whipped and brow beaten by his wife Beverly Pear (Kathy Najimy, King of the Hill, Hocus Pocus) whose family is on vacation in Vegas, and Enrico Pellini (Played by Rowan Atkinson, the creator of Mr. Bean and Johnny English) a simple and narcoleptic man who is excited by everything around him, who all serendipitously decide to gamble, winning in the process a coin telling them to meet with Donald Sinclair (Cleese) who offers them a chance at millions by having them race each other to Silver City, to be the first to claim a suitcase full of money. Nick (Meyers character) is joined by Tracy Faucet (Played by Amy Smart, The Butterfly Effect, Just Friends), a sweet natured but psychotic airplane pilot. With a plot like that, there has to be at handful of funny scenes, right? Well, lets dive in and find out. THE PROS: The film is hysterically funny, in fact when I saw it in theaters back in 2001, I laughed hard and consistently almost all the way through the movie. The characters are funny and well rounded considering theyre more archetypes than actual well rounded characters, but the actors, particularly Gooding Jr., who has a funny subplot where he hijacks a bus full of Lucille Ball impersonators on the way to a convention, Goldberg, with another funny side plot involving a crazy squirrel salesman (Played by Best Actress Winner Kathy Bates, Annie Wilkes from Misery, Mama from The Waterboy), Lovitz and Najimy, who also have a very funny running gag where their kids pester them into visiting a Barbie museum (Nazi Klaus Barbie), Cleese, who plays a goofy, gambling tycoon, who frequently makes bets with his associates over ridiculous things, Smart, who makes a one note love interest funny, interesting and memorable, and Atkinson, who plays a variation of his Mr. Bean character. With such funny gags and an interesting cast, how could this movie go wrong? Well... THE CONS: Toward the third act, the film begins to run out of steam. The first two thirds are ingenious and highly inspired, yet when the characters main arcs are pretty much wrapped up, the movie feels like it needs to start recycling bottom of the barrel situation jokes. Another thing that dates this movie is the ending. The group, who is chasing and fighting each other to claim the cash, end up crashing into a Smash Mouth benefit charity concert. Not only is this a problem by the nature of the fact that Smash Mouth is no longer socially relevant, but all of the characters just decide to hand over all of their money to this charity without a second thought. This seemed a little bit out of character for everyone involved to me, considering they were all established at the beginning of the film to be extremely, incredibly selfish people, and I just could not buy that jump in logic. But how is Rat Race on the whole? CONSENSUS: While not having a too terribly funny or exciting climax, the first two thirds are extremely well written and inspired and the actors bring a lot of charisma to their otherwise flat and uninteresting characters. All in all, I would recommend this film, at least for the first two thirds, and think you should race out to find it. This is one madcap adventure youll remember for some time to come. STAR RATING: 3 Stars out 5 LETTER RATING: B- CONSUMER RATING: MATINEE, albeit an unenthusiastic low one Reviewed by Atticus C. Howell on 2/18/2014 Rat Race is owned by Paramount.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 22:33:18 +0000
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