Hey folks, Harry here... Capone is just knocking em down, wish my back was healed all the way so I could be hitting all my local screenings, but I'm being very selective till this thing heals... So I am choosing specific titles to see and not to see based upon potential of wasted time. Thus I've missed this one, though I keep hearing that it is entertaining. Back pain vs lukewarm recommendations.... mmmmmm, no thank you... Here's Capone...
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here with the sad tale of a death in the industry. The death of Jerry Zucker's talent as a director of comedy. In my mind, Jerry Zucker used to be a genius. He and his writing/directing partners David Zucker and Jim Abrahams creating some of my favorite comedies in the last 25 years, including AIRPLANE!, TOP SECRET!, RUTHLESS PEOPLE, and the “Police Squad!” T.V. series, which turned into the three NAKED GUN movies. Zucker than broke off from his team and directed the hugely successful spiritual melodrama GHOST in 1990. But since then, he really hasn’t done anything of note (unless you count the bomb FIRST KNIGHT with Richard Gere and Sean Connery). Zucker has returned to comedy with RAT RACE, a remake of the 1963 slapstick classic IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD.
The plot involves an eccentric Las Vegas casino kingpin (John Cleese sporting disturbing looking fake teeth) who picks several people staying at his hotel to race from Vegas to New Mexico with keys that open a railway station locker containing $2 million. The first one there gets all the money, and the rules are: there are no rules. Cleese is doing this so several of his rich friends can bet huge amounts of money on who will be the winner. Really, the only way a film like this can be successful is if the contestants are interesting and funny, and if the material is even halfway credible. It’s something of a coin toss. Because the film is cluttered with largely B-list actors, RAT RACE isn’t quite the colossal disappointment of, say, AMERICAN SWEETHEARTS. Some of the contestants (most of which are paired with a family members or friends) are somewhat funny; others annoyed me to no end. It was nice to see Amy Smart and Breckin Meyer reteam after the dismal ROAD TRIP. They’re a very likeable pairing and fun to watch; they’re also the only characters in the whole film that don’t act like idiots at some point.
Also on hand are Whoppi Goldberg and Lanei Chapman as a mother and daughter reunited after Chapman was given up for adoption at birth. They meet for the first time, the contest begins, and there’s never really any sense of emotional connection between the two. This storyline of handled most awkwardly and neither actress is very funny. Fairing better is Seth Green and Vince Vieluf as the Cody brothers. I tend to like Seth Green even in some of the terrible movies he’s been in, like JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS, and he’s okay here, but Vieluf really cracked me up as a guy who talks like he has a severe speech impediment, when in fact he just gave himself a really horrible tongue piercing. He also screams like a banshee whenever he’s in trouble, and for some reason it just cracked me up every time. I’m not quite sure what I thought of Rowan Atkinson’s performance as the Italian tourist. He basically just makes funny faces and has an utterly bizarre accent. There’s one scene where he’s playing with a baby, and the voices and faces he makes cross far into Mr. Bean territory. I guess I wasn’t that impressed with how he was used.
The real losers in the film (aside from the audience) are Jon Lovitz and Kathy Najimy, as a married couple traveling with their two kids. Nothing about this grouping even made me crack a smile. There’s a strange plot involving them getting ahold of Hitler Mercedes-Benz and Lovitz accidentally painting a Hitler mustache on himself that just made me ill, not because it was in poor taste but because it was so lame. Cuba Gooding Jr is back in full-blown overacting mode in RAT RACE as a shamed football ref who ends up driving a busload full of Lucille Ball lookalikes. Didn’t Lucy jokes stop being funny 30 years ago? Were they ever really that funny to begin with? Gooding yells every line, waves his arms around like he’s on fire, and bugs his eyes out whenever he possibly can. Yeah, he deserved an Oscar.
I won’t ruin the “surprise” ending of RAT RACE or tell you who gets the money, but the conclusion of the film may tip the scales in favor of me giving this film a negative review. It resorts to the tried-and-true (and unfunny) scenario of embarrassing people in a very public forum (in this case, a televised Smashmouth concert). I may be cutting RAT RACE too much of a break because I had much lower expectations. Some parts of this movie made me chuckle. The running visual gag of a cow strung up to a hot-air balloon was amusing but, like most things in RAT RACE, they use the gimmick so much it gets tired. Jerry Zucker has gone the way of Blake Edwards and Mel Brooks (the movie director, not the Tony Award-winning dude) and lost his humorous touch. It’s that simple. I’m not sure another director could have made a better movie, but Zucker used to be able to turn sub-par material into gold. RAT RACE is barely gold-plated.
Capone (capone@aintitcoolmail.com)
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