Running Time:
112 minutes
Enterprise, Comedy
It's not continually you gain yourself wishing for an horrendous and preferably fatal road accessory, but the thought most absolutely popped into my Mr Big whilst watching 'Rat Race'.
This botched and cripplingly unfunny course movie brings together a company of Hollywood's most desperate, each one plausibly happy to do anything to make themselves in fashion again. Anything, that is, except make a decent movie.
John Cleese, who's in danger of becoming as big a peddle-manifest seller as any of them, plays a well-heeled casino owner eager to give his filthy-rich clients some exciting late 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 assembly of randoms from his casino level to go after it, and opens a book on who'll get there first.
Entirety the selected cretins chasing the loot are Whoopi Goldberg and Lanei Chapman as a mother-and-daughter cooperate, Seth Verdant and Vince Vieluf as a twin of bungling brothers, Cuba Gooding Jr. as a nationally-despised football ref and Jon Lovitz as a pig-unknowing blood man. Perhaps most irritating of the barrels, however, is Rowan Atkinson with his portrayal of a narcoleptic Italian (it's a convincing job he eventually tells you what his nationality's alleged to be, because you certainly can't guestimate from the accent). A viewing of this, and of course 'Johnny English', can unfortunately lead to only sole question - why has Atkinson stopped being jocular? That you could watch three whole episodes of 'Blackadder' in the time spent alluring in this bull doesn't back up a survive rational 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 silent comedies ever made and tried to piece together an entertaining end issue out of it. Impresario Jerry Zucker is so complicated throwing a seemingly unceasing formation of allegedly hare-brained scenarios at us, that he doesn't visit to think what reasons there might be for the duration of 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.
'The Making Of Rat Race', deleted scenes & prohibited-takes, gag reel, interview with director Jerry Zucker & sob sister Andy Breckman, and a theatrical trailer.
It's Got:
Journeyman rock corps Smash Mouth taking part in what is a shockingly mischievous distressing ending, quits by the standards set by the previous 100 minutes.
It Needs:
To be banned for attempting to harden comedy back 20 years.
Alternatives:
It's A Mad Crazed Mad Loco World, The Cannonball Run, Road Trip
Digest:
A particular long, pinched-out and not even accidentally comical toy.
Comment on Date: 24th September 2003