41 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
41 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
after watching " rat race " last week , i noticed my cheeks were sore and realized that , when not laughing aloud , i had held a grin for virtually all of the film's 112 minutes .
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saturday night , i attended another sneak preview for the movie and damned if i didn't enjoy it as much the second time as the first .
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" rat race " is a great goofy delight , a dandy mix of energetic performances , inspired sight gags and flat-out silliness .
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hands down , this is the most fun film of the summer .
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the movie begins with zippy retro-style opening credits that look like they were torn straight out of a '60s slapstick comedy , featuring animated photos of the cast attached to herky-jerky bodies bounding around the screen .
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then comes the setup .
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donald sinclair ( john cleese ) , the extremely rich owner of the venetian hotel and casino in las vegas , enjoys concocting unusual bets for his high rolling clients .
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to that end , he places a half dozen very special tokens in his slot machines .
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gathering together the lucky token holders , he explains , " today you have a chance to play a game where the odds of winning are one in six . "
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the competition is simple : each contestant gets a key that opens a locker in silver city , n . m . , containing $2 million in cash .
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there is a transmitter in every key , so that sinclair and his cronies can keep track of who is ahead .
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the race has no rules ? whichever contestant reaches the locker first gets the money .
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since it would be wrong to spoil any of the jokes , let's use the next few paragraphs to profile the racers .
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decked out in flashy , trashy clothing and sporting big hair , vera baker ( whoopi goldberg ) is in town to reunite with the daughter she gave up for adoption as a baby .
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she finds that grown-up merrill ( lanai chapman ) is erudite , conservative and more than a little bit wary of this stranger trying to jump into her life .
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thrown together , it becomes clear that both women share a fierce competitive nature .
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owen templeton ( cuba gooding jr . ) is currently the most hated man in america .
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an nfl referee , he cost gamblers all over the country enormous amounts of money by blowing a call in a high-profile game .
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after escaping from a vengeful cab driver , owen gets to new mexico by masquerading as the driver for a busload of lucy ricardo impersonators heading to a convention .
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mr . pollini ( rowan atkinson ) is a cheerful , odd little italian man on holiday in america .
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he also is narcoleptic and falls asleep at the most inopportune times .
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pollini hitches a ride with zack ( wayne knight ) , a hyper-tense ambulance driver carrying a human heart across country for a transplant operation .
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randy pear ( jon lovitz ) promised his wife beverly ( kathy najimy ) and two kids a fun-filled vacation in las vegas .
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fearful that beverly will be angry over his involvement in the race , he claims that he must travel to silver city for a job interview .
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beverly insists the family stay together , so they hop in the mini-van and tear off into the desert .
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brothers duane ( seth green ) and blaine ( vince vieluf ) cody are young , crooked and stupid .
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blaine has a speech impediment due to his poorly self-done tongue piercing , and duane is the only person who can come close to understanding him .
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the boys will stop at nothing to reach their goal .
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finally , nick shaffer ( breckin meyer ) is a no-nonsense lawyer-in-training who recruits helicopter pilot tracy faucet ( amy smart ) for the journey .
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at first glance , they seem blandly wholesome , but all that changes when tracy buzzes the home of her boyfriend shawn ( dean cain ) and spies him swimming with another woman .
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director jerry zucker ( " airplane , " " ghost " ) leaps from racer to racer , periodically returning to las vegas where sinclair and mr . grisham ( dave thomas ) , his personality-impaired right hand man , continue cooking up bizarre bets for the gamblers .
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as with any zucker production , a few jokes fall flat , but the momentum of the comedy zooms past those missteps .
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high points for me include a bit involving kathy bates as a roadside squirrel salesperson and an intricately set up gag that carries jon lovitz and family from a bizarre museum to an outdoor rally , with an utterly tasteless and screamingly funny pay-off .
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had i been part of the filmmaking team , i would have ditched a joke where a key is dropped into a baby's clothes and instead had the key get lost in the cleavage of a dozing society matron .
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it would have drawn the same laugh without the squirm-inducing hint of child molestation .
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i also would have selected a different band for a concert sequence .
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my god , do we really need yet another movie with smash mouth performing " all star ? "
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but enough carping .
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" rat race " is a riot , with terrific no-holds-barred performances from the diverse cast .
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see it , see it again and when the dvd comes out , buy it , because a movie this hilarious will surely have outtakes to die for .
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