Rat Race

Plot

Hotel tycoon Donald Sinclair devises a game to entertain the high rollers who visit his Las Vegas casino: six competitors are to race to Silver City, New Mexico, where $2 million is inside a duffel bag in a train station locker. The racers consist of ne'er-do-well brothers Duane and Blaine Cody; businesswoman Merrill Jennings and her mother Vera; disgraced football referee Owen Templeton; tourist Randy Pear and his family; narcoleptic Italian tourist Enrico Pollini; and no-nonsense attorney Nick Schaffer.

Duane and Blaine destroy the airport's radar, which grounds everybody else but wrecks their vehicle in the process, prompting them to rent another. They decide to split up to better their chances and have a locksmith create a duplicate locker key, but the locksmith overhears their plan and makes off with the key in a hot air balloon. The brothers catch up to the locksmith, leaving him and a stray cow hanging from the balloon's anchor rope. After Blaine gets distracted by two women driving beside them on the road, he and Duane veer off into a monster truck rally, where they steal one of the trucks after their rental car is crushed.

Merrill and Vera are given malicious directions by a woman selling squirrels on the side of the road, and crash into a pile of totaled vehicles with the skeletons of her previous victims. After stumbling through the Mojave Desert, they hijack a rocket car until it runs out of fuel. Left nauseous by the car's extreme speed, Merrill and Vera accidentally stumble onto a busload of mental patients headed for Silver City.

Owen has his pants and other belongings stolen by a taxi driver as revenge for a bad call Owen previously made at a football game, which caused the driver to lose a bet. Stumbling across a bus station, he dupes and impersonates the driver of a bus on the way to transport a group of Lucille Ball cosplayers to an I Love Lucy fan convention. On the way to the convention, Owen accidentally hits the cow dangling from the hot air balloon and crashes the bus. After revealing he is not the real driver and escaping from the cosplayers, Owen steals a horse.

Randy forces his daughter Kimberly to defecate out of their minivan's window to avoid stopping; as revenge, she insists they visit a museum dedicated to Nazi officer Klaus Barbie, mistakenly believing it to be about Barbie dolls. The family steals Adolf Hitler's staff car after seeing their minivan sabotaged by Duane and Blaine, only to be confronted by an all-female biker gang. Randy drives his family into a large gathering for World War II veterans after his tongue is accidentally burnt by the dashboard cigarette lighter, where the veterans are put off by his Hitler-like slurred speech and appearance. Later, at a diner where his family insists they end the trip, Randy slips sleeping pills into their milkshakes and packs them into a semi-trailer truck.

Cast

Minor

Fox Sports commentators

Production

Development

Rat Race was written by Darryl Quarles as a spec script in November 1998. In February 1999, the script had been sold to Hollywood Pictures and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. In August 1999, Jerry Zucker was in negotiations to direct the film for Paramount Pictures from a screenplay written by Andy Breckman that would be set in Las Vegas, Nevada and in New Mexico.

Paramount hoped to begin production at the end of 1999 or the beginning of 2000. Jerry and Janet Zucker were set to produce the film alongside Sean Daniel, while Daniel's partner in Alphaville Films, James Jacks, would serve as executive producer. The filmmakers initially considered having the race take place from Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas, New Mexico, but the idea was rejected following concerns that it might confuse viewers.

In January 2000, Las Vegas, Nevada was confirmed as a filming location for Rat Race. Location scouting in southern Nevada was scheduled for May 2000, while filming in the area was delayed until the fall of 2000 to avoid shooting the film in one hundred degree summer heat. Breckin Meyer and Amy Smart were cast in the film in June 2000, while Dean Cain also joined the cast in October. Actor John Cleese praised the script as one of only two scripts during his career that he enjoyed: "It's so unusual to get a top class script. Twice in my life I've had the experience of reading a script and simply saying, 'I'm going to do this.'"

Filming

Filming began in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in August 2000. Filming took place primarily along Calgary's highways, which stood in as highways that the characters travel on in Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. Desert scenes were shot in the Canadian town of Drumheller. Second unit filming began in Las Vegas on August 7, 2000, with scenes primarily involving Cuba Gooding Jr.. Scheduled filming locations included the Las Vegas Strip, Tropicana Avenue (east of the Las Vegas Strip), McCarran International Airport, and Nevada State Route 159. Other scheduled filming locations in Nevada included Goodsprings and Sandy Valley.

The scenes involving Gooding and the group of Lucy cosplayers were shot in the Canadian Rockies. Jerry Zucker, who had a tradition of including his mother Charlotte in each of his films beginning with Airplane!, had her portray one of the Lucy cosplayers. Jerry Zucker said, "It's like the Alfred Hitchcock signature. Instead of me, it's mom." Filming also took place at Calgary's former Currie Barracks military base, which had been converted to accommodate film and television productions. Sound stages were constructed inside two aircraft hangars at the base to be used for many of the film's interior scenes, including the Venetian's hotel rooms and conference room. Driving scenes, using green screens and rear projection effects, were also shot inside the hangars. The scene with the coin toss by Owen Templeton was filmed at Calgary's McMahon Stadium during a game on September 4.

Filming returned to Las Vegas for a nine-day period beginning on September 20, 2000, with the first three days spent at the McCarran International Airport, before moving to the Venetian resort on the Las Vegas Strip for a six-day shoot. Venetian officials negotiated with Paramount for six months to use the resort in the film. Scenes were shot throughout the Venetian, with the exception of its hotel rooms. Venetian scenes included the casino, lobby, and the entrance to its valet parking garage, as well as exterior shots of the resort. Approximately 1,000 background extras were needed during the second Las Vegas shoot. On September 25, 2000, second unit filming took place along Nevada State Route 161, leading to Goodsprings.

Filming in Las Vegas concluded on September 29, 2000, and production moved to Ely, Nevada, which stood in as Silver City, New Mexico. Ely's Nevada Northern Railway Museum stood in as the Silver City train station. According to the Nevada Film Office, the filmmakers "fell in love" with the museum after being shown pictures of it. As a result, the initial two day shoot in Ely was extended to six days. Ely's western entrance, accessed from U.S. Route 50, was used as the entrance to Silver City. After concluding in Ely, production crews relocated to southern California for the final six weeks of filming, mainly for exterior scenes. California filming primarily occurred in Antelope Valley, Palmdale, Acton, Santa Clarita and Newhall. Rosamond, California was also a primary location, with filming occurring during a three-week period in October 2000. Smart's helicopter scenes were filmed at 3118 Carnation Street in Rosamond. Additional filming in California occurred at Big Sky Ranch and El Mirage Lake.

Reception

Box office

Rat Race was released in both the United States and Canada on August 17, 2001, and grossed US$11,662,094 in its opening weekend at the North American box office, ranking third behind American Pie 2 and Rush Hour 2. The film ultimately grossed $56.6 million domestically and $28.8 million overseas for a worldwide total of approximately $85.5 million based on a budget of an estimated $48 million, making it commercially successful.

The film was released in the United Kingdom on January 11, 2002, and opened also at number three behind the non-comedic The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. For the next two weekends, the film retained the spot, before moving down one place and then four places down before finally ending up on No. 10 on February 10, 2002.

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 44% based on 129 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Rat Race moves from one sight gag to another, but only a handful of them are genuinely funny." On Metacritic, the film received a score of 52 based on 26 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an above average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Jo Berry of Empire gave the film three stars out of five, writing "Ex–Saturday Night Live writer [Andy] Breckman piles on the gags for this daft chase movie. It's incredibly silly, but also rib-ticklingly funny."