Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

38 12 Rounds
48 17 Again
76 Adventureland
48 Angels & Demons
54 Battle for Terra
xx Bruno
80 Coraline
40 Dance Flick
83 Drag Me to Hell
72 Earth
45 Fast & Furious
61 Fighting
34 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
72 Gran Torino
73 Hangover, The
47 Hannah Montana: The Movie
51 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
54 Imagine That
41 Knowing
32 Land of the Lost
56 Monsters vs. Aliens
34 My Life in Ruins
51 My Sister's Keeper
46 Next Day Air
42 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
54 Observe and Report
25 Obsessed
48 Proposal, The
70 Public Enemies
61 Soloist, The
83 Star Trek
64 State of Play
55 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
52 Terminator Salvation
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
77 Under the Sea 3D
88 Up
43 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
34 Year One

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Rat Race
Paramount Pictures


8.4

based on 26 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 57 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for sexual references, crude humor, partial nudity and language

Starring Whoopi Goldberg, John Cleese, Cuba Gooding Jr., Rowan Atkinson, Jon Lovitz, and Kathy Najimy

An irreverent look at the outrageous lengths people will go for the chance to win two million dollars.

GENRE(S):	Comedy
WRITTEN BY:	Andy Breckman
DIRECTED BY:	Jerry Zucker
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 29, 2002 Video: January 29, 2002 Theatrical: August 17, 2001
RUNNING TIME:	112 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Canada / USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The funniest film to come along since "South Park," and one that succeeds in a more difficult and satisfying way.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Inspired, elaborately plotted, and unusually satisfying variable-speed chase comedy.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The movie is over in a breezy 112 minutes, but it may be another half-hour before your sides quit aching.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The easygoing silliness with which this late-summer movie surprise scuttles from mayhem to mayhem and the verve with which the cast throws itself into the fray are so cheering and liberating.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Even though this will not go down as a great Zucker comedy, he has made Rat Race funnier than it could reasonably hope to be.

Time Richard Schickel

It's a fine madness, full of jaunty desperation, survivable disasters and the kind of ferocious concentration on a really stupid idea that once propelled Wile E. Coyote.

Mr. Showbiz Cody Clark

An outrageously silly movie that makes me laugh.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The movie is so cheerfully, furiously relentless, its contagious silliness wears you down.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Rat Race isn't a stupid movie -- it's an aggressively stupid movie that journeys into realms of absurdity that are, well, aggressively funny.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

And even though the jokes keep on coming, not all are side-splitters. But before it's all over, they will have viewers howling at one or more pants-wettingly silly moments.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Atkinson, somehow managing to be simultaneously delicate and broad, can do things with his face that shouldn't be legal. His delighted and delightful Mr. Pollini is a little taste of comic genius.

LA Weekly Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

The good news is that this off-the-wall ensemble comedy may just be the summer's happiest surprise.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

A strong ending might have obscured the mediocrity in the writing, or at least diverted us, but the ending is sentimental where it needed to be hard-edged and comically merciless. For a film about people hurtling forward, Rat Race is pretty pedestrian.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A cheesy affair with no big winners. Especially the audience.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

Zucker gives the movie an ebullient spirit, but he also keeps everything at the same loud pitch throughout.

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

Hits its silly stride early and never shifts into a higher gear.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A sad, sad, sad, sad rip-off.

TV Guide Steve Simels

For every inspired bit -- Templeton playing chauffeur to 40 I Love Lucy-era Lucille Ball impersonators -- there's one that falls spectacularly flat.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Zucker's frenzied trifle is painless, with a few decent running gags -- and an ocean of bad ones.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Despite these flaws, people sick of gross-out films and teen-sex comedy may be so hungry for farce that they laugh.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Overheated, underdone farce. Race for the exit.

Variety Robert Koehler

A lineup of comic actors running on empty long before the dust settles.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

This ripoff, directed by Jerry Zucker, has a few funny moments, but it's a sad sad sad sad example of what Hollywood is currently serving up -- and what audiences are swallowing -- as summer entertainment.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

It lumbers from one scene to the next with the stop-and-start mistiming generally seen in the outtakes shown at the end of the "Cannonball Run" movies, which this picture resembles in spirit.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Somnambulistic pacing, kerplunkingly unfunny jokes, and mugging thespians making fools of themselves. Truly torturous spectacle.

New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky

There's nothing more enervating than a stupid film with only random, and perhaps accidental, flashes of smarts; the rare prescient moments only serve to highlight how banal and vacant the rest of the movie is, especially when it stoops to conquer the gross-out market bled dry by the Farrelly Brothers and their myriad acolytes.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 57 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Alex H gave it a0:
How do people think this movie is good? Rat Race is a horrible, annoying, and unfunny movie that should've never been made.

andrew r gave it a10:
"Should have bought a squirrel" This movie is awsome!

Michael D. gave it an8:
I'm usually a total comedy snob. In this genre of comedy there is very little that I really like. Where this movie succeeds is in a whole new original kind of slap-stick that forces you to chuckle at least at its inventiveness.

Greg U. gave it a9:
This is a really funny movie. Oh and by the way, no one cares if it is a rip off of A MAd waste of time er whatever. THis is an awsome movie and that's final.

Nate H. gave it a 4:
This rating is only when the movie is compared to "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," which is the best comedy ever made. Too bad they had to pathetically try to rip it off and give NO CREDIT to the original.

Jude S. gave it a 10:
This movie was so funny! I love it!

The Voice gave it a 6:
Rather lame..."hahaha"

Rat Race Paramount Pictures

Rat Race
Paramount Pictures