Cheap Rat Race (DVD) (John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jon Lovitz, Breckin Meyer, Amy Smart, Vince Vieluf) (Jerry Zucker) Price

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Customer Reviews of Rat Race

it's a race, its a race, I hope I win!!!
crank it, spank it and smack it on the bingbong, this movie is filled with hilarity from great stars. the line up includes John Cleese(Monty Python and The Holy Grail), Jon Lovitz(North) and his wife Kathy Najimy(Tv's Veronicas Closet), Seth Green(tv's Buffy The Vampire Slayer) and his tounge piereced brother Vince Vieluf(Grind). Cuba Gooding Jr.(Radio and Boat Trip), Wayne Knight(Jurassic Park), Rowan Atkinson(Bean), Whoopi Goldberg(tv's Whoopi) and her daughter Lanai Chapman. Breckin Meyer(Dancer,Texas Pop 81.) and his new girl Amy Smart(Road Trip). Dean Cain(Future Sport). Dave Thomas(2003's Brother Bear). and the band Smashmouth, who fill this comedy with its class and memorable moments including all of Seth Green and Vince Vieluf's bits, they are funny as hell and the part where Jon Lovitz drives the hitler mobile into a WWII veterans camp and looks like Hitler as he comes to the podium and slurs his speech after being burnt in teh tounge by a car cigarette lighter, just uproarous. you dont want to miss this one

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Zany screwball comedy is a hit!
The race is on in "Rat Race," the latest screwball comedy about a group of people given the chance to win two million dollars, depending on who arrives first. The setup is hokey and the jokes run from strained to laugh-out-loud funny, and when the final scene finishes, what you have is a good time at the movies that isn't the most satisfying of all comedies, but is no failure.

The film starts out in Las Vegas, where eight people play eight different slot machines and each receive a gold coin as an invitation to a dinner hosted by hotel owner Donald Sinclair (John Cleese). There's the Cody brothers, Blaine (Vince Vieluf) and Duane (Seth Greene), mother/daughter duo Vera (Whoopi Goldberg) and Merrill (Lanei Chapman), play-it-safe Nick (Breckin Meyer), vacationing family dad Randy (Jon Lovitz), former football referree Owen (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), and quirky Enrico (Rowan Atkinson).

They are given the offer, and off they go, racing to reach the jackpot before the others can beat them to it. It's a ridiculous setup, of course, but the the jokes are enough to keep the movie at a commendable comedic high rather than drown it in one-liners we've all heard before.

There are moments that fail in tickling our funny bone, of course; no comedy is without them. Blaine recently pierced his own tongue, requiring that he speak awkwardly and without coherence at times. This is funny at first, but seems to get old when Duane must re-utter everything he says.

But the moments that do work are pure gold, a treasure chest of slapstick gags and humorous jokes that are worth the price of admission. Goldberg and Chapman are a hit as the mother/daughter group who become sidetracked when they decline to purchase a squirrel from roadside vendor Kathy Bates, who guides them in the wrong direction, and off a cliff. Randy and his family are a complete knockout when they arrive at a Barbie museum, only to discover that it is run by Nazis who have ruined their van. In turn, they steal Adolf Hitler's car, and the results are side-splitting.

Cuba Gooding, Jr. proves his worth in a comical film as Owen, who made a bad call in his last football game and keeps running into people who recognize him. His adventure lands him on a tour bus filled with Lucille Ball look-alikes on their way to an "I Love Lucy" convention. I was surprised most especially by how funny he can be; his mark as a great actor is his ability to play drama and comedy to perfection.

The real stars of the show are Rowan Atkinson, who is delectably goofy and wired-up as Enrico. His bouts of narcolepsy cause him to come to sudden halts for long periods of sleep, while his miscomprehension of the English language hits home. When he hitches a ride with a medic transporting a vital donor organ for transplant, at all goes downhill for them, with wacky results.

In closing, "Rat Race" is not a movie you pick apart for plot development and story coherence. It barely seems to matter, and if you try to look for them, you miss out on the laughs, the fun, and the comedy in one of the funniest films of the summer season.

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What the Heck?
This was the oddest, wierdest, strangest, dumbest, movie in the world! I LOVED (...) It was really stupied some of the things that happened like one of the guys found a bus full of I Love Lucy impersinators to that whole "Squirrel thing." But it's an awesome, hilarious movie and I loved it.