MovieChat Forums > Rat Race (2001) Discussion > Corny garbage. Missed the point of what ...

Corny garbage. Missed the point of what made It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World so funny.


I just saw this terrible movie and couldn't believe how bad it was.

Part of the reason it was bad is that Zucker missed the point of what It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World so funny. The point was to watch these otherwise very normal, law-abiding, civilized citizens become incredibly reckless and crazy the greedier they got. This is why they eventually got themselves into crazy situations. They let their greed get in the way of good judgment. In the end, they paid for their greed by losing the money and getting injured.

In Rat Race, 90% of the craziness has nothing to do with the plot. It's just random stuff, most of it absurdist.

Oh, and where was the "race"? In It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and the famous "Lucy Hunts Uranium" episode of the Lucy-Desi Hour, the humor lay in you seeing these characters screwing each other and experiencing setbacks. But in this movie, that almost never happens. The screenwriters did the lazy thing of just writing six different dilemmas that each of the contestants go through, then showing them racing each other at the last minute. You don't get any scenes establishing which contestant is ahead or lagging behind, which ones are the dark horse, which ones are experiencing setbacks and which ones are getting the edge.

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You are right, but the movie is just SO much worse than anyone can even describe, on all possible levels.

The name doesn't even make sense, as there are no rats, it's not a race, and the idiom 'Rat Race' refers to corporate wage-slave job, typically from 8 to 16 or 9am to 5pm (take your pick). This is not a 'rat race' by ANY definition of the word.

Even 'Squirrel Race' would've been fitting - it would've been really stupid, too, but at least it would have had SOME meaning as to what's going on in the movie.

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