Review of Rat Race (2001) by Harry W — 18 Dec 2013

Rat Race can be summarised by saying that it's a massively scattershot comedy full of hit and miss jokes.

Rat Race boasts an impressive ensemble cast comprised of many talented comedians, but much of the time it really doesn't know what to do with them and wastes their talents on jokes not fit for their comedic talents. For example, Rowan Atkinson is featuredi n Rat Race, yet his character receives minimal screen time and doesn't talk much, but also he doesn't receive much comedic material to work with and so he rarely is the source of any laughter. The character he is stuck working with is stupid, and if he's one of the main reasons you watched Rat Race as was my case, then you are likely to be disappointed because there is no elements of Mr Bean or Blackadder in it, but rather just the use of his name and minimal screen time for him.

Certain jokes in Rat Race work while many fall flat, and as a fan of practically all the actors involved I was seriously disappointed because having Cuba Gooding Jr. crash a bus full of Lucille Ball fans, having Whoopi Goldberg end up in a rocket car and having all of these actors pitted in a story where they have to race to Silver City, New Mexico to get $2 Million all sounds funny on the surface but it was executed in such a formulaic and cartoony way that the jokes just rarely succeded. Most of the humour came from the actors' performances instead of the jokes, but it would have worked better if they really had sufficient material to actually work with. Unfortunately Rat Race is not a film where such hope proves to be anything more than just mere hope.

The scattershot story loses its appeal fast and rarely goes through any form of dynamics that are anything more than repetitive stupid jokes which fail to make an impact, and for a comedy with unsuccessful jokes it clearly fails at achieving what it set out to, as did director Jerry Zucker when he made Rat Race.

Some of the performances are rather funny though.

Jon Lovitz's character is possibly the funniest because of his natural charm as a comedic actor even when he works with such ridiculous comedic material, and of course John Cleese is always marvellous and succeeds at making an impact within his brief time on screen. His funniest scene is in the film intro.

Whoopi Goldberg and Cuba Gooding Jr. manage to do a decent job at times, as does Seth Green. Really, the presence of the ensemble cast in Rat Race is more genial than it is funny, so at least there is some charm.

So while Rat Race is an easy to watch comedy with a good cast, its not that easy to laugh at and doesn't take advantage of its actors, particularly Rowan Atkinson.