Grade: D

Verdict: It's a bad, bad, bad, bad movie.

Details: Starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Whoopi Goldberg, Seth Green and John Cleese. Directed by Jerry Zucker. Rated PG-13 for sexual references, crude humor, partial nudity and profanity. One hour, 52 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: “Rat Race” wasn't such a good idea the first time they made it in 1963 and called it “It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

But at least that film has a certain time-capsule fascination in that it captures the creme de la creme of Borscht Belt comedy circa early '60s (Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Buddy Hackett, Jimmy Durante, etc.)

In their stead, “Rat Race” serves up Rowan Atkinson, Jon Lovitz, Cuba Gooding Jr., Whoopi Goldberg and assorted others, including an extended cameo by John Cleese. It's really not the same. As in “Mad, etc.” everyone's after a huge sum of money — in this case, a cool $2 million stuffed into a locker in New Mexico. Some randomly selected tourists hanging out in a Vegas casino are invited by a gambling tycoon (Cleese) to his penthouse office where he hands out six keys, each of which will open the locker.

Explaining about the money, he says there are no rules, just first come/first served. When one contestant complains that Cleese can't just pick people at random and hi-jack their lives, he replies, “I can do anything I want. I'm an eccentric.”

So, who are his rats? A mother (Whoopi Goldberg) and her long-estranged daughter (Lanai Chapman) who are trying to get to know one another; an exhuberant European (Rowan Atkinson) who suffers from narcolepsy; dumb and dumber brothers who fancy themselves con artists ( Seth Green and Vince Vieluf); a nice Jewish family whose dad (Jon Lovitz) is a lying layabout; a disgraced NFL referee (Cuba Gooding Jr.); and a straight-arrow lawyer (Breckin Meyer) who dismisses the whole idea until he meets a comely helicopter pilot (Amy Smart, Meyer's co-star in “Road Trip”) who just happens to be going to New Mexico.

They're off to the races, using everything from the expected (cars, trains) to the unexpected (Hitler's touring car, a rocket car) to get to New Mexico first. What ensues are some set-piece stunts, a bus-load of Lucy impersonators; any number of garish humiliations; any number of hit-and-miss gags; and the requisite cow joke.

Everyone ends up at a Smashmouth concert where the picture, having lost all respect for itself, turns sticky sweet.

Meanwhile, back at the casino, a much funnier movie is going on. Turns out that Cleese has a hidden agenda. He's catering to his high-roller clientele who've tired of normal betting games. “It's a horse race with animals who can think and plan and lie and cheat,” he says. “It's the gambling experience of a lifetime!”

While the rats keep racing, Cleese and company bet on everything from which candy will be pulled out of a box of chocolates to which hotel maid can dangle the longest from a curtain rod.

The real rats here are director Jerry Zucker, who single-handedly created a new comedy genre with “Airplane!” and screenwriter Andy Beckman, a sometime “Saturday Night Live” writer. Most of the movie is more obnoxious than funny with jokes that are too broad or too stale or both. Further, the characters themselves aren't all that amusing. Atkinson, best known as Mr. Bean, is even more irritating in Italian. Gooding and Goldberg are on automatic. Lovitz is simply recycling his liar's routine that got tired on “SNL” years ago. There are exceptions. Chapman proves to be a deft comedian. Smart is pretty and engaging. And Cleese has a devilish good time.

Best of all is Kathy Bates in a tiny part as a lady who sells squirrels by the roadside. She doesn't like it when you don't buy one. Really doesn't like it.

However, if you're the type who still finds “Who Let the Dogs Out” on a soundtrack to be fresh and hilarious or a Lucy look-alike in drag as side-splitting as it is creative, disregard everything above. This is your movie.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service