Rat Race(2001)

Paramount Pictures

PG-13
Rated PG-13 for sexual references, crude humor, partial nudity and language
1h 52m

Release Date: Aug 17, 2001 | Wide

B+
6.5

A Las Vegas casino magnate determined to find a new avenue for wagering sets up a race for money.

Releases

Original Release | Aug 17, 2001

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Box Office Results

Updated as of May 14, 2026 11:53 AM ET

Results

Opening Weekend US & Canada:
$11,662,094
Total US & Canada:
$56,618,055
Total International
$28,880,479
Total Worldwide:
$85,498,534

Current Showtimes

Your Location or

(U.S. Only)

Director & Top Cast

Jerry Zucker
Director

Breckin Meyer
Nick Schaffer

Amy Smart
Tracy Faucet

Whoopi Goldberg
Vera Baker

Jenica Bergere
Hotel Clerk

Cuba Gooding Jr.
Owen Templeton

Carrie Diamond

Casino Bartender

Douglas Haase

Guy at Bar

Chris Myers

Fox Sportscaster

Kevin Frazier

Fox Sportscaster

Seth Green

Duane Cody

Gloria Allred

Vince Vieluf

Blaine Cody

Renée Lee

Witness in Crowd

Corinna Jones

Cocktail Waitress

Jane C. Walsh

Cocktail Waitress

Lanei Chapman

Merrill Jennings

Jillian Marie

Kimberly Pear

Technical Specifications

Sound Mix: DTS,Dolby Digital,SDDS

Aspect Ratio: 2.39 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: United States

Language: English

Summaries

Plot Summary

Donald Sinclair (John Cleese), the eccentric owner of The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas, devises a new game to entertain the high rollers who visit his hotel. Six special tokens are placed in the casino's slot machines, and the winners of them are gathered together and told that $2 million in cash is hidden in a bag in a train station locker in Silver City, New Mexico. They are told they must compete in a no-holds-barred race to get there first and claim the money. Each winner is given a key that will open the locker and they are sent on their way. What they do not know is that Sinclair's wealthy patrons are placing bets on who will win the race.Among the racers are scheming twins Duane (Seth Green) looking to make money off insurance scams and Blaine Cody (Vince Vieluf) who is unintelligible due to an infected tongue piercing, businesswoman Merrill Jennings (Lanai Chapman) with anger issues and her estranged mother Vera (Whoopi Goldberg) a superstitious mother, who gave Merrill up for adoption and is now reuniting with her, disgraced football referee Owen Templeton (Cuba Gooding Jr) recently infamous for a bad call on account of bad judgment, the Pear family led by opportunistic father Randy (Jon Lovitz) a sneaky, irresponsible and recklessly opportunist tourist, his wife Beverly "Bev" Pear (Kathy Najimy), elder son Jason (Brody Smith) and daughter Kimberly (Jillian Marie Hubert), eccentric Italian tourist Enrico Pollini (Rowan Atkinson) a simple-minded, narcoleptic Italian tourist from Naples, and no-nonsense attorney Nicholas "Nick" Schaffer (Breckin Meyer). Having initially agreed not to play, greed takes over and they start to race.Duane and Blaine destroy an airport radar with their pickup truck grounding everybody else but wrecking their own vehicle in the process, so they rent another. They decide to split up to double their chances of winning by creating a replica key. However, a locksmith Lloyd (Silas Weir Mitchell) overhears their plan and makes off with the key. The brothers chase the locksmith who tries to escape in a hot air balloon, only for the brothers to steal back the key and leave the locksmith dangling from the balloon with a cow for company. Later, after Blaine is distracted by two attractive women driving beside them on the road, they veer off of it and their rental car is crushed by a monster truck, which they steal to get to Silver City.Merrill and Vera are given malicious directions by a woman selling squirrels as pets on the side of the road, and crash into a pile of other totaled vehicles containing her previous deceased victims. This forces them to steal a rocket car which races across the desert until it runs out of fuel. Left disoriented due to the car's extreme speed, they then accidentally stumble onto a busload of mental patients headed for Silver City.Owen is kicked out of a taxi for a bad call he made at a football game that caused the driver to lose a bet. Now without most of his clothes or other belongings. He comes across a coach filled with women going to an I Love Lucy convention and disguises himself as the driver. After the cos-players flood the bus with suds, he later hits the cow dangling from the balloon and crashes the bus. After the cos-players lose the only spare wheel, Owen reveals that he is not the real driver and the enraged women chase him down the road. He escapes them and steals a horse to ride to Silver City.Randy and his family, at the insistence of their daughter Kimberly after he forces her to defecate out of the window of their mini-van to avoid stopping, visit a museum dedicated to a famous Nazi, Klaus Barbie, mistakenly believing it to be about Barbie the doll. After the family awkwardly leave the museum, they steal Adolf Hitler's staff car after Duane and Blaine sabotage their mini-van. While driving the staff car, the family is attacked by an all-female biker gang and Randy, who burns his tongue after the dashboard cigarette lighter accidentally ejects directly into his mouth, drives them into a large gathering honoring World War II veterans, unaware of how his slurred speech and disheveled appearance insults them. Later at a diner when his family insist, they end the trip, Randy drugs them by slipping sleeping pills into their milkshakes and bundles them into a semi-truck heading for Silver City.Nick at first refuses to participate until he meets helicopter pilot Tracy Faucet (Amy Smart) who offers him a lift to Silver City. She decides to visit her boyfriend on the way, who she finds cheating on her with another woman in his backyard, so she attacks him by using the helicopter to chase him into the desert. Now having damaged her helicopter and with police on the way to arrest them, she and Nick steal her ex-boyfriend's truck together and form a romantic relationship while driving to Silver City.Enrico, who is narcoleptic (an extreme tendency to fall asleep), falls asleep at the start of the race but awakens hours later and receives a lift from ambulance driver Zack Mallozzi (Wayne Knight), who offers Enrico a lift in order to avoid a lawsuit from Gloria Allred, who witnessed Zack hit him with his van. Zack is delivering a heart to El Paso. The heart gets lose in the van, and Enrico accidentally throws it out the window. Zack considers removing Enrico's heart to replace the first, but Enrico flees onto a passing train, only for Zack to restart the first heart by touching an electric fence. Enrico drops his locker key in a baby's diaper and, while retrieving it, is mistaken for a pedophile by the parents. He is thrown out at Silver City Station.Enrico arrives at the train station first only to fall asleep as he reaches the locker. The racers reunite in Silver City and fight to open the locker, only to find it empty. Outside, Sinclair's assistant Grisham (Dave Thomas) and call girl, Vicki (Brandy Ledford), are making off with the money. The locksmith, still attached to the runaway balloon, suddenly appears and maneuvers it to drop the cow on Grisham and Vicki. He then ties the money bag to the balloon, but it accidentally slips out of his grip and into the sky. The racers chase the balloon to a charity concert where Smash Mouth are performing, and the band and crowd mistake the money for a donation. Once the racers see what a global difference the money could make, they have a change of heart and decide to donate it all. Sinclair and his patrons arrive at the scene and Nick horrifies them by announcing they will match the money raised. Sinclair is distraught as the donations total shoots past $19 million, and the racers celebrate by dancing and crowd-surfing to "All Star".

Storyline

Donald P. Sinclair has placed six separate gold coins in different slot machines in his casino. The lucky six who find these coins discover an opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to own $2 million, locked up in a locker in New Mexico. These six contestants must now race one another to be the first to the cash. There are no rules in place and everything that could possibly happen does. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Sinclair's associates are placing their bets. — Film_Fan A group of billionaires led by a Las Vegas casino owner search for things to bet on. They decide to pull a group of six strangers together to race from Vegas to Silver City, New Mexico to retrieve $2 million hidden in a locker. The first one there gets all of the money. The first team are two addled brothers, Duane and Blaine, who talks indecipherably because of a newly-pierced tongue. When they cannot catch a plane, they plot to destroy an airport control tower. Their antics carry them into a hot-air balloon chase that catches a cow with a dangling rope and invades monster truck competition. The second team is a reunited mother and daughter; the daughter is struggling to start a business. They face an insane squirrel-selling woman and steal a rocket car scheduled for a land-speed-record attempt. A hated NFL referee is stranded in the desert by an irate cabbie and hijacks a busload of Lucille Ball lookalikes on the way to a convention. The Jewish family man on a family vacation joins the race without telling his wife why they are rushing across the country. When his daughter insists on stopping at a Barbie museum, it is without realization that it is the Klaus Barbie Nazi Museum. The escape from that location involves the theft of Hitler's personal touring car and culminates with Lovitz having his tongue burned and accidentally crashing into a WWII Veterans convention. A narcoleptic Italian gets a ride with an ambulance driver who is carting a human heart for a transplant. Through various ineptitude, the heart ends up flying out of the truck's window and the two must recover it from a playful dog. The final race member is a straight-laced future lawyer who at first declines to participate in the race, but rethinks his position after he meets a smart, beautiful woman who is flying a helicopter to New Mexico. He quickly finds out that she is unbalanced after she flies over her boyfriend's house and starts an attack on him when she sees him in the pool with an ex-girlfriend; an air pursuit results in the crash of the helicopter. Dave Thomas also appears as Cleese's humorless attorney. — John Sacksteder <jsackste@bellsouth.net> Donald Sinclair owns the biggest, snazziest, flashiest, high-rolling-est casino in Las Vegas, and to entertain some of his wealthiest patrons, he's staged the most original high-stakes game that Sin City has ever seen. The contestants? Six teams. The jackpot? Two million dollars stuffed in a locker hundreds of miles away. The odds of winning? One in six. The rules? Well there's only one--get there first. What the racers don't know is that the tycoon and his rich buddies are betting on the outcome and are tracking every move the teams make. It's only a matter of time before they figure out who really stands to win the most before switching course to look for a different kind of pay-off. — Sujit R. Varma A betting-obsessed casino mogul and his group of just-as-bad billionaire associates set up a new kind of gamble in a race for $2 million hidden away in a locker. They enlist the aid of eight people who happen to be residing in his casino at once. A clean-cut lawyer, a disgraced NFL referee, two inept brothers, a reunited mother and daughter, a narcoleptic Italian immigrant, and a desperate father embark on a series of misadventures to obtain the money, no matter what it takes. — MonkeyKingMA