Trailer
Plot summary
The high rollers who fill Donald Sinclair's Las Vegas casino will bet on anything, so their host invents a contest for six ordinary people. Each racer is handed a key to one locker holding $2 million, and the first to open it keeps the cash. Among them: brothers Duane and Blaine Cody; Merrill Jennings, a businesswoman meeting the mother who gave her up, Vera; Owen Templeton, a referee notorious for a bad call; Randy Pear, a tourist traveling with his wife Bev and their children; Enrico Pollini, a narcoleptic Italian; and Nick Schaffer, an attorney. Sinclair and his wealthy friends monitor the racers' progress.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Rat Race (2001)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The character Donald Sinclair shares his name with the former joint owner of the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, the man who provided the inspiration for the eccentric Basil Fawlty, played by John Cleese in Fawlty Towers.
- Jerry Zucker, who had a tradition of including his mother in each of his films beginning with Airplane!, had her portray one of the Lucy cosplayers, saying: “It's like the Alfred Hitchcock signature. Instead of me, it's mom.”
- John Cleese praised the script as one of only two in his whole career that he enjoyed, saying: “It's so unusual to get a top class script. Twice in my life I've had the experience of reading a script and simply saying, 'I'm going to do this.'”
- A cameo by professional wrestler Diamond Dallas Page and his then-wife was cut from the film when audiences did not react to his appearance in test screenings, though the scene is available on the film's DVD release.
- Most of the cross-country chase was actually filmed on highways around Calgary, Alberta, standing in for Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.
- Rat Race was inspired by Stanley Kramer's 1963 film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and like that picture it features an ensemble cast.
