Like Stanley Kramer's "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" (1963), this silly screwball comedy has a simple premise. Six unsuspecting people, along with their partners, are entered in a bizarre "human rat race" devised by an eccentric Las Vegas casino owner (John Cleese) as a new kind of gambling game for his Venetian Hotel high-stakes rollers who can make bets on the outcome.

Each contestant, chosen at random, is given a key to #001 locker in a train station in Silver City, New Mexico, containing a duffel bag filled with two million dollars in cash. Whoever gets there first keeps the loot - and there are no rules.

The competitors include Whoopi Goldberg and Lanai Chapman, as a reunited birth-mother and ambitious daughter, who are sent off a cliff by frustrated squirrel-seller Kathy Bates; moronic con-artist brothers Seth Green and Vince Vieluf, who plot to sabotage the Las Vegas airport's radar system, thus forcing all the others to scramble to find other - and slower - transportation; Breckin Meyer and Amy Smart, who use a helicopter since it doesn't need airport radar; Jon Lovitz and Kathy Najimy, who had planned to see David Copperfield but wind up stealing Hitler's Mercedes limo; Rowan Atkinson, a narcoleptic Italian, who grabs a ride with an ambulance driver, Wayne Knight, who is transporting a heart to Texas; and Cuba Gooding Jr., a disgraced NFL referee who, stranded in the desert by an irate taxi driver, hijacks a chartered bus filled with Lucille Ball impersonators.

Former SNL writer Andy Breckman ("Sgt. Bilko") and director Jerry Zucker ("Airplane!" "Naked Gun") show no restraint, throwing in every gag imaginable - including flying cows and comic Nazis - to elicit a laugh. Unfortunately, several of them miss the mark due to bad timing, the schtick wears thin, and the contrived, corny conclusion leaves much to be desired.

Among the cast members, Jon Lovitz scores highest, delivering a funny performance as a middle-aged slacker whose daughter insists that the family visit the Barbie Museum, not realizing it honors Nazi Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyon, not the popular doll. They swipe one of Hitler's cars only to wind up in a rally for World War II veterans.

It's too bad the Canadian locations bear little resemblance to the Southwest - except for the historic turn-of-the-century train station which is actually located in the small mining town of Ely, Nevada. Run by the Nevada Northern Railway Historical Operating Museum, it's still open to tourists. (I know 'cause I've been there.) And lawyer Gloria Allred's cameo is so awkward it's downright embarrassing to watch.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Rat Race" is an absurd, madcap 5, but it's not, as Cleese claims, "the gambling experience of a lifetime."

If you're intrigued by this idea, why not rent the original, "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World," which starred Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Ethel Merman, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Dick Shawn, Peter Falk, Phil Silvers, Buster Keaton, Milton Berle, Zasu Pitts and Jack Benny? Problem is...it, too, is only sporatically amusing.

Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older