Rat Race

Directed by Jerry Zucker, Rat Race follows eccentric billionaire Donald P. Sinclair (John Cleese) as he challenges an assortment of quirky characters, including Whoopi Goldberg’s Vera, Seth Green’s Duane, and Amy Smart’s Tracy, to a race worth $2 million. It’s a larger-than-life setup that’s employed to sporadically hilarious yet undeniably erratic effect by Zucker, as the filmmaker, working from Andy Breckman’s screenplay, delivers an overlong comedy that’s been suffused with what seems like an equal number of compelling and tiresome sequences – although, to be fair, the picture does benefit rather substantially from the efforts of an exceedingly appealing cast that also includes Rowan Atkinson, Wayne Knight, and Jon Lovitz. (The latter, cast as a frazzled husband and father, is undoubtedly responsible for the picture’s single-funniest interlude, with the effectiveness of this short scene essentially justifying the entire movie’s existence.) The hit-and-miss bent of Rat Race‘s midsection is, as a result, rarely as problematic as one might’ve assumed, and it’s finally clear that the film stands as a frequently gut-busting comedy that falls just short of greatness (or, at the very least, consistency).

**1/2 out of ****