Movies - Rat Race

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Rat Race (film)

	Movies - Rat Race

Rat Race is a 2001 comedy film (not to be confused with The Rat Race
of 1960) directed by Jerry Zucker, producer of other films such as Airplane!
and The Naked Gun
series. It is an updated retelling of the 1963 film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
. The story is about six teams of people going to a casino and getting sent up to the casino mogul. He tells them that they have a chance to win huge cash if they get to a locker first. From there, insanity ensues.

Tagline: 563 miles. 9 people. $2 million. 1001 problems!

Plot

The movie begins with zippy retro-style opening credits that look like they came straight-out of a '60s slapstick comedy, featuring animated photos of the cast attached to herky-jerky bodies bounding around the screen.

Donald Sinclair (played by John Cleese; incidentally this is the name of the man Cleese based Basil Fawlty on) owns a hotel-cum-casino in Las Vegas. In order to entertain some of his wealthiest patrons, Sinclair must offer betting on unique competitions. To that end, he places six special tokens in his casino's slot machines. Gathering together the lucky randomly-chosen token holders, he explains, "Today you have a chance to play a game where the odds of winning are one in six." The competition is simple: Each contestant gets a key that opens a locker in Silver City, New Mexico, containing $2 million in cash. There is a transmitter in every key, so that Sinclair and his cronies can keep track of who is ahead. The race has no rules – whichever contestant reaches the locker first gets the money.

The first team are two inept brothers (Seth Green and Vince Vieluf, who talks indecipherably because of a newly pierced tongue). When they cannot catch a plane, they plot to destroy an airport radar tower. Their antics carry them into a hot air balloon chase that catches a cow with a dangling rope and into a monster truck competition.

The second team is an estranged mother (Whoopi Goldberg) reunited with her daughter (Lanai Chapman), who is struggling to start a business. They face an insane squirrel-selling woman (Kathy Bates) and steal a rocket car scheduled for a land speed record attempt before being mistakenly put on a bus for the mentally challenged (because of their deliriousness from going at Mach 1).

A hated NFL referee (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) is stranded in the desert by an irate cabbie (Paul Rodriguez) and hijacks a busload of Lucille Ball look-alikes on the way to a convention. One of the lookalikes is played by Charlotte Zucker, director Jerry Zucker's mother.

The Jewish family man Randy Pear (Jon Lovitz) on a family vacation joins the race desperately without telling his wife (Kathy Najimy) why they are rushing across the country. His daughter insists on stopping at a Barbie museum, it is without realization that it is the Klaus Barbie Nazi Museum. The escape from that location involves the theft of Hitler's personal touring car and culminates with Randy having his tongue burned and getting smeared with black lipstick which gives the appearance of a Hitler's moustache. They accidentally crash into a WWII Veteran's convention, where the Hitler-like babbling caused by his burnt tongue (and the fake moustache) cause him to get booed and shot at by the veterans.

A narcoleptic Italian tourist (Rowan Atkinson in his best Mr. Bean-like manner) gets a ride with an ambulance driver (Wayne Knight), who is carting a human heart for a transplant. Through various feats of ineptitude, the heart ends up flying out of the truck's window and the two have to recover it from a playful dog.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Rat Race (film) ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Rat Race (film); it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Movies - Rat Race

Plot

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay