A Lot or a Little?
What you will—and won't—find in this movie.
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Positive Messages
very little
The cast boasts racial and ethnic diversity, but there is some mocking of certain ethnicities, most notably Italians courtesy of Rowan Atkinson. Nonetheless, all characters are equally mocked, sending a positive message of unity and respect wrapped in giddy silliness. Many characters are willing to scheme and steal to beat out their rivals, but such scheming usually meets comic comeuppance.
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Positive Role Models
a little
All of the characters are lovable (though not very realistic), and generally very sympathetic. At the movie's end, all the characters are called upon to make a difficult, self-sacrificing choice and all opt to do the right thing.
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Violence & Scariness
some
Near-constant and sometimes tense cartoonish violence, with many car crashes, a helicopter accident, a monster truck coming within inches of crushing two characters, etc. No one actually gets hurt, however.
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Sex, Romance & Nudity
some
An escort is summoned to a hotel room and an unusual erotic situation is priced; a woman flashes a man on the highway and we see her breast from the side; there are numerous references to cross-dressing and several to a racist-sounding p*rn movie. A woman lands a helicopter on her ex-boyfriend's hot tub as penance for him cheating on her.
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Language
some
Lots of colorful phrases: "What the hell?" "Son of a bitch!" There's also potty humor, as when one young child says she has to go #2 so bad she's "prairie dogging."
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Drinking, Drugs & Smoking
a little
A few scenes take place in bars, and characters buy each other drinks. One man feeds his family over-the-counter sleep meds to keep them out of the way.
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Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Rat Race is a slapstick comedy in the tradition of Airplane!, with mile-a-minute jokes and lots of absurdity. There are toilet jokes and gross-out jokes, such as when one character vanquishes a rival by shooting him in the face with milk from a cow's udder. There is racial humor, gun humor, and tons of scenes in which fast-moving cars and buses go off the road and careen down hills. There is drinking, gambling, and a scene in which an escort prices a list of odd sexual services. For all this, Rat Race is cheerfully loony and quite funny, with a brilliant cast and enough jokes that if one misses there's another to get you chuckling again. Unshockable parents will enjoy watching this with older kids. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
What's the Story?
In RAT RACE, casino owner Sinclair (John Cleese) has a plan to attract the really high rollers -- a race between creatures who can think, plan, and lie -- humans. Six randomly selected customers of the casino are each given a key to a box in a Utah train station. Inside the box is $2 million, and the first one there gets it all. The six include Rowan Atkinson as a narcoleptic Italian, Cuba Gooding, Jr. as a disgraced football referee, Whoopi Goldberg as a woman just reunited with the daughter she hasn't seen since she was a baby, Brecken Meyer as a conservative lawyer who always plays by the rules, Jon Lovitz as a father on vacation with his family, and Seth Green and Vince Vieleuf as small-time con artists. Along the way, they meet up with the prettiest helicopter pilot in the world (Amy Smart), neo-Nazis, real-life superlawyer Gloria Allred, a rocket car, a truck driver delivering some very important and fragile cargo, and a bus full of Lucy impersonators. There is a lot of good, old-fashioned, hit-on-the-head humor, but it's like a Road Runner cartoon -- everyone bounces back without a scratch in the next scene, ready to get right back into the game.
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Movie Details
- In theaters: August 17, 2001
- On DVD or streaming: January 29, 2002
- Cast: Breckin Meyer, Cuba Gooding Jr., Seth Green
- Director: Jerry Zucker
- Inclusion Information: Black actors
- Studio: Paramount Pictures
- Genre: Comedy
- Run time: 112 minutes
- MPAA rating: PG-13
- MPAA explanation: sexual references, crude humor, partial nudity and language
- Last updated: March 3, 2024
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