Rat Race (2001)
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Six teams of people race from a Las Vegas casino to a New Mexico train station to claim a duffel bag filled with $2 million.
The story
Hotel tycoon Donald Sinclair organizes a competition to entertain high rollers at his Las Vegas casino. Six diverse teams are tasked with racing from the casino to a train station in Silver City, New Mexico. The first team to reach a specific storage locker and provide the correct key will win a duffel bag containing $2 million. The teams include a pair of ne'er-do-well brothers, a high-strung businesswoman and her mother, a disgraced football referee, a tourist and his family, a narcoleptic Italian tourist, and a no-nonsense attorney. Each group faces unique obstacles and absurd complications as they navigate the desert and highways toward the prize.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
Donald Sinclair's competition leads six teams on a chaotic journey from Las Vegas to Silver City. The Cody brothers sabotage the airport and eventually steal a monster truck; Merrill and Vera get lost in the desert and end up on a bus of cosplayers; Owen Templeton is forced to impersonate a bus driver after losing his belongings; the Pear family ends up in a car resembling a Nazi vehicle; and Nick Schaffer travels via helicopter before switching to a truck. Enrico Pollini, the narcoleptic tourist, reaches the locker first but falls asleep. When the others arrive, they find the locker empty as the money is stolen by Sinclair's assistant and a call girl. However, a locksmith's balloon drops a cow on the thieves, and the money is mistakenly donated to a charity concert. Realizing the potential for good, the racers decide to donate the money themselves, and Nick offers to match the amount, resulting in a massive donation that leaves Sinclair distraught.
- First release year
- 2001
- Runtime (minutes)
- 112
- Production countries
- United States; Canada
- Original languages
- English
- Directors
- Jerry Zucker
- Writers
- Andy Breckman · writer
- Cast and characters
- Rowan Atkinson · Enrico Pollini; John Cleese · Donald P. Sinclair; Whoopi Goldberg · Vera Baker; Cuba Gooding Jr. · Owen Templeton; Seth Green · Duane Cody; Vince Vieluf · Blaine Cody; Lanai Chapman · Merrill Jennings; Jon Lovitz · Randy Pear
- Genres
- comedy; chase
- Themes
- competition; greed; luck
- Tone and mood
- comedy; absurd
- Premise and plot tags
- road movie; ensemble cast; treasure hunt
- Source material / true-story basis
- Inspired by Stanley Kramer's 1963 film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
- Reported review scores
- Rotten Tomatoes · score: 44% · scale: percentage · review count: 129
- Production trivia
- The film was inspired by It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.; The director, Jerry Zucker, included his mother in every film since Airplane!.; The film was a box office success, grossing $85.5 million on a $48 million budget.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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