Rat Race
3.5/4
Starring: Breckin Meyer, Amy Smart, Seth Green, Vince Vieluf, Whoopi Goldberg, Lanai Chapman, Jon Lovitz, Kathy Najimy, Cuba Gooding Jr., Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese
Rated PG-13 for Sexual References, Crude Humor, Partial Nudity and Language
"Rat Race" depends on, more than anything, comic momentum. This is 90 minutes of madcap insanity, and for it to work, the laughs have to come one after the other. On that level, the film is a flat-out success. While there are a few dead spots, it's consistently amusing and occasionally uproarious.
A group of people has been randomly selected for a special game in Las Vegas. They are: risk-averse Nick (Meyer), narcoleptic Italian Enrico Pollini (Atkinson), Vera (Goldberg) and her long lost daughter Merrill (Chapman), dimwitted thieves Duane (Green.) and Blaine (Vieluf), family man Randy (Lovitz) and notorious referee Owen (Gooding Jr). As casino magnate Donald Sinclair (Cleese) explains, there is a duffel bag sitting in a locker at a train station in New Mexico, and the first one to get it keeps it all. The chase is on between some very desperate people who will do anything to get there first. Hey, when a bag containing $2 million cash is on the line and you have a one in six chance of getting it, you'd do anything to get it too.
Movies like this are hard, nay, impossible to review. This isn't about characters, story or any grand philosophical idea. This is about madcap insanity. How do you talk about that? How do you describe it, regardless of giving anything away? It's a daunting task.
One thing I can say is that the movie never slows down. These people will do anything to get there first. And they often have to. For example, Owen finds that his past mistake will come back to haunt him. Nick comes to realize that his ride, a sexy pilot (Smart) may have a few secrets of her own that he doesn't want to know.
And so it goes. "Rat Race" has plenty of surprises, few of which are expected. That's the difference between a good comedy and a bad one. I'm not going to give anything away, but I realize that in order to explain why this is so funny, I have to give you a taste. This movie includes: a car with a very dark history, a desperate flee from a group of angry Lucy Ricardo impersonators, and a few warnings why a person should never trust a detour. How two of the characters get into an encounter with a car, a cow, and a hot air balloon defies description.
This is not an actor's show. All that is required of them is comic aptitude and the ability to convey single-minded selfishness and obsession. On that note, the cast does their jobs. John Cleese is uneven but a bright spot is Amy Smart, an underrated actress if there ever was one. Looking back, she has a little of the effortless mischief that made Amanda Peet so captivating (and hilarious) in "The Whole Nine Yards."
There's only unit of measure for a movie like this, and that's whether or not I laughed. I laughed. Not always consistently, but definitely more often than not. And occasionally I laughed so hard I'm surprised I wasn't injured. That's more than enough to get an enthusiastic recommendation from me.
Starring: Breckin Meyer, Amy Smart, Seth Green, Vince Vieluf, Whoopi Goldberg, Lanai Chapman, Jon Lovitz, Kathy Najimy, Cuba Gooding Jr., Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese
Rated PG-13 for Sexual References, Crude Humor, Partial Nudity and Language
"Rat Race" depends on, more than anything, comic momentum. This is 90 minutes of madcap insanity, and for it to work, the laughs have to come one after the other. On that level, the film is a flat-out success. While there are a few dead spots, it's consistently amusing and occasionally uproarious.
A group of people has been randomly selected for a special game in Las Vegas. They are: risk-averse Nick (Meyer), narcoleptic Italian Enrico Pollini (Atkinson), Vera (Goldberg) and her long lost daughter Merrill (Chapman), dimwitted thieves Duane (Green.) and Blaine (Vieluf), family man Randy (Lovitz) and notorious referee Owen (Gooding Jr). As casino magnate Donald Sinclair (Cleese) explains, there is a duffel bag sitting in a locker at a train station in New Mexico, and the first one to get it keeps it all. The chase is on between some very desperate people who will do anything to get there first. Hey, when a bag containing $2 million cash is on the line and you have a one in six chance of getting it, you'd do anything to get it too.
Movies like this are hard, nay, impossible to review. This isn't about characters, story or any grand philosophical idea. This is about madcap insanity. How do you talk about that? How do you describe it, regardless of giving anything away? It's a daunting task.
One thing I can say is that the movie never slows down. These people will do anything to get there first. And they often have to. For example, Owen finds that his past mistake will come back to haunt him. Nick comes to realize that his ride, a sexy pilot (Smart) may have a few secrets of her own that he doesn't want to know.
And so it goes. "Rat Race" has plenty of surprises, few of which are expected. That's the difference between a good comedy and a bad one. I'm not going to give anything away, but I realize that in order to explain why this is so funny, I have to give you a taste. This movie includes: a car with a very dark history, a desperate flee from a group of angry Lucy Ricardo impersonators, and a few warnings why a person should never trust a detour. How two of the characters get into an encounter with a car, a cow, and a hot air balloon defies description.
This is not an actor's show. All that is required of them is comic aptitude and the ability to convey single-minded selfishness and obsession. On that note, the cast does their jobs. John Cleese is uneven but a bright spot is Amy Smart, an underrated actress if there ever was one. Looking back, she has a little of the effortless mischief that made Amanda Peet so captivating (and hilarious) in "The Whole Nine Yards."
There's only unit of measure for a movie like this, and that's whether or not I laughed. I laughed. Not always consistently, but definitely more often than not. And occasionally I laughed so hard I'm surprised I wasn't injured. That's more than enough to get an enthusiastic recommendation from me.
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