Rat Race (film)
| Rat Race | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover | |
| Directed by | Jerry Zucker |
| Written by | Andy Breckman |
| Produced by | Jerry Zucker |
| Starring | John Cleese Rowan Atkinson Cuba Gooding, Jr. Whoopi Goldberg Jon Lovitz Seth Green Kathy Najimy Breckin Meyer Amy Smart Vince Vieluf Lanai Chapman Kathy Bates Paul Rodriguez Wayne Knight Brandy Ledford Dave Thomas Brody Smith Silas Weir Mitchell Jillian Marie Hubert Smash Mouth Rance Howard Colleen Camp Dean Cain Gene LeBell Gloria Allred Chris Myers Kevin Frazier |
| Music by | John Powell |
| Distributed by | Paramount Fireworks Entertainment Jay Firestone |
Release date | 2001 |
Running time | 112 min |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $48,000,000 (estimated) |
Rat Race is a 2001 comedy film directed by Jerry Zucker. The story is about six teams of people given a task of racing from a Las Vegas casino to a train station in New Mexico, where a storage locker contains a large amount of money; the first team to reach the locker wins and gets to keep the money. Unbeknownst to them, however, they are actually just part of a betting game. It is a loose remake of the earlier film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Plot
Donald Sinclair (John Cleese), the eccentric billionaire owner of The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas devises a new game to entertain the wealthy patrons that visit his hotel. Six special tokens are placed in the casino's slot machines, and the winners of the tokens are gathered together and told that two million dollars in U.S. cash are hidden in a locker in a train station in Silver City, New Mexico. They are told they are in a no-holds barred race to get there first and claim the money. Each winner is given a key that will open the locker and they are sent on their way. Meanwhile, Sinclair's patrons place bets on who will end up with the money.
The film follows the contestants and the gamblers as they try to make their way to the locker. Throughout their travels, they all take part in comedic circumstances, ranging from a monster truck race, to a cross country balloon ride, and also an attack by bikers. When they finally reach the money, they find it gone, and Sinclair's assistant has run away with it. A series of events ends with them landing on the stage at a charity concert fronted by Smash Mouth. A misunderstanding results in the contestants giving the money to charity, and while originally, they don't want to give the money away, seeing the beneficiaries of it lightens their hearts. In another comedic twist, Schaffer turns the tables on the gamblers by claiming they have promised to double the total amount of donations received, spurring the donations of everyone watching from only a few thousand to multi millions. The movie ends with the main characters crowd-surfing while Smash Mouth performs.
Major characters
Duane and Blaine Cody
The two inept Cody brothers, Duane (Seth Green) and Blaine (Vince Vieluf). Duane is the "sensible" one, while Blaine mumbles incoherently due to his swollen and badly infected tongue — the result of a self-piercing gone wrong. They are at the casino to attempt to get rich by faking an injury and suing the casino. Instead they end up racing for the $2,000,000. Having sabotaged the airport radar system to prevent anyone from flying to Silver City because they couldn't purchase a ticket themselves, they decide to split up and go separately to increase their chances of winning, so they try to get a second key made. They are not very bright, however, and the locksmith rips them off giving them two unmade keys while keeping the real one (they indiscreetly discussed their plan within earshot of the locksmith). The chase grows to a climax involving a hot air balloon and a cow pasture.
Vera Baker and Merrill Jennings
The second team is a mother-daughter team. Vera Baker (Whoopi Goldberg) went to the casino to meet her adult daughter, Merrill Jennings, (Lanei Chapman). Vera had not seen Merrill since she was put up for adoption as a baby, and despite tentative familiar feelings they are essentially strangers. Although Merrill is sure that the race is a scam, her mother is excited by the idea and convinces her to join the race. While searching for the interstate, they meet an insane woman (Kathy Bates) who is selling squirrels. When they persistently refuse to buy one, the Squirrel Lady gives them directions that, instead of leading them to the interstate, sends them through a group of signs saying "you" "should" "have" "bought" "a" "SQUIRREL" and off a cliff to a pile of cars and skeletons of the other people who did not buy squirrels. After wandering in the desert, they steal a rocket car set to break the land speed record and when it runs out of fuel, they are mistakenly placed on a bus bound for a mental hospital.
Owen Templeton
The much-hated NFL referee, Owen Templeton (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), is accused of making the "biggest bonehead call in the history of football" when the moment came to toss the coin for the kick-off preceding overtime. He is stranded in the desert by an irate cabbie (Paul Rodriguez) who lost a large sum of money due to Templeton's bad call in the football game. Owen comes across a small bus station and tricks one of the bus drivers into giving him his driver uniform and hat (saying his wife needs it because she is having a baby). However, the bus is full of Lucille Ball look-alikes on the way to an I Love Lucy convention. After a number of events on the bus (including a run in with a transgender Lucy), the bus gets a flat tire and then flips over. Owen runs away from them after they learn that he is not a bus driver and finds a horse to take him the rest of the way to Silver City. In a deleted scene, Owen is saved when a bus of Ricky Ricardo look-alikes pulls up and the Lucy crowd goes over to them.
Pear family
Randy Pear (Jon Lovitz) is on a family vacation and, desperate to get rich so he doesn't have to work at Home Depot any more, he joins the race without telling his wife Bev (Kathy Najimy) or his children why they are rushing across the country. He instead informs her that he has a job interview for filling ink pens, and ends up being forced to steal Adolf Hitler's car from a Nazi-themed museum about Klaus Barbie (Randy's daughter believed at first it was about the doll - ironically, the Pear family is Jewish, and they decide to beat a hasty retreat from the museum and its evidently Neo-Nazi curators) after the Codys sabotage their car. Unfortunately their getaway in Hitler's vehicle leads the family to more detours. While on the road, Randy, who accidentally sticks his middle finger in the cigarette lighter and gets burned, encounters a female biker and her gang. An accidental insulting gesture and a Freudian slip whilst trying to placate the lead biker, who is evidently unimpressed by their choice of transport, enrages the gang and the car is attacked, resulting in the cigarette lighter landing in Randy's mouth. After they are run off the road, the Pears crash into a podium...where they are confronted by a packed audience who were celebrating an event of surviving World War II veterans, which would be made worse when Randy's incoherent mumbling (along with the smudge on his mouth and burnt finger) made him sound like Hitler, prompting the family to escape after seeing the angry mob (including a veteran who had a gun that was aiming at Randy). When his wife discovers what he is up to, the family wish to return to Vegas, but Randy puts them out with sleeping pills (in their milkshakes, just in time to elude the museum's proprietors after he spots them) and has a semi-truck driver take them the rest of the way, after seeing that the museum owners have tracked the car.
Enrico Pollini
The narcoleptic Italian tourist Enrico Pollini (Rowan Atkinson), despite being the most enthusiastic about the race, falls asleep for a few hours before even leaving the hotel lobby, much to the frustration of those who had bet on him winning due to his apparent enthusiasm and initial head start. When he eventually wakes up, he gets a ride with a medical services driver Zach (Wayne Knight), who is delivering a human heart for a transplant. On the way he loses the heart, which is found, but badly damaged and dirty, and hitches a ride from a train, while a desperate Zach contemplates killing Enrico to use his heart as a replacement. Fortunately for Zach, after Enrico escapes it turns out the original heart still works, even though it's still dirty. Strictly speaking, Enrico is the winner as he reaches the locker first, but he falls asleep just as he puts his key in and whether he counts as the official victor is questionable. In the Italian Dub, he is from London, and his name is "Enry McCoglions".
Nick Schaffer
The final race member, Nick Schaffer (Breckin Meyer), is a straight-faced lawyer, and arguably the most intelligent of the racers. At first, he declines to participate in the race, but re-thinks his position after he meets Tracy Faucet (Amy Smart), who is a helicopter pilot flying to New Mexico. While making a detour to drop in on Tracy's boyfriend (in which Nick is unaware of), they spot his ex-girlfriend's car in the driveway and the two of them in an above-ground pool in the backyard, making love. In response, Tracy unleashes the fury of a scorned woman, collapsing the pool, trashing her now ex-boyfriend's truck, and then chases him out into the desert, pursuing him in the helicopter. Tracy's fury against her ex-boyfriend starts to scare Nick a lot, but nevertheless, he gets used to it. After the helicopter develops engine trouble, Nick and Tracy were forced to abandon it and take the abused-but-still-usable truck, deciding to work together to reach the money.
Donald Sinclair
Donald Sinclair (John Cleese) is the owner of the casino where the others meet and he creates the 2 Million Dollar Race for his highroller guests. During the course of the movie, he runs various smaller (but increasingly daft) bets to keep the obsessive gamblers satisfied whilst waiting for the grand finale, including which gambler will throw up first on a turbulent airplane, which chocolate Sinclair's assistant will randomly choose (coconut), which hotel maid can hold onto the curtains longest without falling, and how much money will a prostitute ask for to shave a man's buttocks in a tub of Pepto Bismol while he clips her toenails, all while naked with sailor hats. The prostitute scene is important later in the plot, as the prostitute and the assistant attempt to steal the money for themselves.
Box office
- The film grossed $55.8 million at the US box office.[1]
Locations
- The climactic railroad station scenes for Silver City, New Mexico were filmed at the restored train station at East Ely, Nevada, a popular tourist destination, as Silver City has no real train station.
- The scene with the coin toss by Owen Templeton (Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s character) was filmed at McMahon Stadium in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Allusions and connections
- Donald Sinclair is the name of a deceased hotel owner from Torquay, England. Cleese has stated that Sinclair was the inspiration for his character of Basil Fawlty in Cleese's Fawlty Towers.
- The film features three Academy Award winners: Kathy Bates, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Whoopi Goldberg. The film is also one of the few films to feature two Academy Award winning African American actors.
Production notes
- Lawyer Gloria Allred is featured in a cameo.
- Sinclair and the gamblers' eccentric gambling habits are even further exaggerated in deleted scenes, where they partake in many more ridiculous bets, including playing Monopoly with real money.
- Pro wrestler Diamond Dallas Page had a cameo in the movie that was cut when test audiences failed to give his appearance any reaction.
Trivia
- This is the second time Breckin Meyer and Amy Smart have been couples in a movie, the first being Road Trip.
Errors
- The setting and timing also features some inaccuracies. Immediately after Vera and Merrill first meet, Merrill receives a phone call where she states that some merchandise must ship immediately to get in stores by Mothers' Day. Since Mothers' Day in the USA always falls in mid-May, we should conclude that this film takes place in April (or possibly early May). Yet this is inconsistent with the fact that Owen had refereed a NFL game just one week earlier, since the Super Bowl occurs at the first week of February, and pre-season play does not start up until August. There is also a theory that the period might have taken place in February, given Las Vegas' usual weather climate.
External links
- Rat Race at IMDb
- Rat Race at Rotten Tomatoes