‘Rat Race’

The celebrity and laugh quotients are high in this silly, side-splitting road show.   [PG-13]

By: Kam Williams
   If you’ve ever seen It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), then you already know the basic plot of Rat Race, a pot o’ gold comedy directed by Jerry Zucker. The original featured an ensemble cast of kooky characters in a zany, winner-take-all, cross-country race to find buried treasure.
   Even though Mad, Mad was nominated for a half-dozen Academy Awards, winning one, Zucker wasn’t discouraged from creating a bald-faced remake. While Rat Race‘s storyline is nearly identical, it’s certainly an improvement on an admittedly laudable antecedent, putting its own insane spin on the avaricious antics.

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John Cleese (center) starts things off with a bang in Jerry Zucker’s new comedy, Rat Race.

   Zucker, a comic genius by anybody’s standards, has a most impressive body of work to show after a long Hollywood career, spent mostly in collaboration with his brother/producer, David. He has directed such comedy classics as Airplane, Naked Gun and Ruthless People. This versatile talent also made Ghost, the bittersweet love story nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
   Whoopi Goldberg, who won her Oscar for Ghost, reunites with Zucker, here, for a relatively lighthearted romp. The cast includes a couple of other Oscar-winners, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Kathy Bates. With Goldberg and Gooding, this marks the first time that two African-American Oscar-winners have appeared in the same movie.
   Rat Race‘s veritable cattle call of seasoned funnymen includes Paul Rodriguez, Jon Lovitz and Dave Thomas, plus Brits John Cleese and Rowan Atkinson. The cast is rounded out with familiar faces such as bubbly Kathy Najimy, Dean Cain and Seth Green, as well as Wayne Knight and blonde-of-the-moment Amy Smart.
   Usually, a top-heavy production such as this gets bogged down with so many luminaries on the set, but director Zucker must be credited for keeping the egos in check while getting the most out of each performer.
   The premise is simple enough: Las Vegas casino owner Donald Sinclair (Cleese) comes up with a new game for high-stakes gamblers in need of a bigger thrill — a "rat race" where humans are the rats and $2 million in cash is the cheese.
   Bettors must guess which of the six randomly selected participants will be the first to make it from Las Vegas to Silver City, New Mexico, where the loot is located. Each combatant is given a key to a hidden locker with a duffel bag stuffed with money. There’s only one rule in this winner-take-all contest: There are no rules. Trading heavily in stunts, sight gags and slapstick, we soon learn how greed brings out the worst in each of these colorful contestants.
   Enrico Pollini (Atkinson) is a narcoleptic, accented Italian who enlists the aid of Zack (Knight), an on-duty ambulance driver. Owen (Gooding) hijacks a bus of Lucille Ball impersonators after he gets dumped in the desert by Gus (Rodriguez), an angry cabbie. Vera (Goldberg) gets bad directions from an ill-meaning squirrel lady (Bates), and the Pear family (Lovitz, Najimy and kids) get mired in their own mini-van mess.
   There’s much more, all of it marked by over-the-top mayhem. The movie is, more or less, a series of separate skits, most of which work, some of which don’t, with the entire cast appropriately assembled at the beginning and again at the end.
   Overall, a sumptuous summer surprise.
Rated PG-13. Contains sexual references, crude humor, partial nudity and adult language.