Film Friday: Rat Race (2001)

“A horse race with animals that can think and lie and cheat and play dirty?”

With the summer ending, let’s do one last film that’s just fun. Directed by Jerry Zucker, Rat Race is the updated version of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). If you’ve never heard of Rat Race, that is because it was a victim of poor timing. Released two weeks prior to 9/11, Rat Race faced stiff competition from a slew of comedies. If you haven’t seen it, you should. Not only is it absolutely funny, but it stands out from the crowd of angry/gross out comedies that are so prevalent today. Here’s why the movie works:

** spoiler alert **

Classic, Flexible Plot

The first element of Rat Race’s success is its classic, flexible plot. Eccentric billionaire Donald Sinclair (John Cleese) picks six people at random from his casino and offers them the chance to race to Silver City, New Mexico, where the winner will get $2 million in cash. He does this so that he and his clients can bet on who will win. Most of the six have partners that join them in the race, and every one of them is a freak. Hilarity ensues.

This is an ideal storyline for comedy for several reasons. First, it’s highly believable, even though it’s outlandish. We all want to believe that races like this happen all the time and that there are dozens of billionaires out there waiting to offer such challenges and hand out money to the winners.

Secondly, the story structure is so flexible that it can be bent to fit whatever comedic ideas work best without making the audience feel that the scene was an after-thought. For example, if the Ghostbusters suddenly came across a rocket car, we would feel that the scene was tacked onto the movie. . . that it was not organic to the plot. But in a movie like Rat Race the flexible plot structure allows the characters to find a rocket car (or a “Barbie” Museum or a busload of Lucy’s) without ever feeling like the scenes have nothing to do with the plot. This gives the movie tremendous comedic possibility.

Excellent “Natural” Casting

The second element in Rat Race’s success is the casting. Check out these names: John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, Whoopie Goldberg, Jon Lovitz, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Seth Green, Kathy Bates, Wayne Knight, Amy Smart, and a dozen more. Each of these actors has proven through their body of work that they are capable of handling comedic timing without coming across as staged or stilted. And in each instance, the actors are well cast for the roles they play. Indeed, they are so well cast, that the actors merge into the roles and you can easily see every one of them being in real life the way they are portrayed in the film. That pulls you right into the movie because you never once feel like they are acting. Compare that with Ben Stiller, who I like, but who always feels like he’s playing a role.

Classical Comedic Principles v. Modern Gross Out/Angry Comedic Principles

But what really makes Rat Race stand out is its reliance on classical comedic principles, rather than trying to apply modern gross out or angry comedy principles. Rat Race is not a gross out/angry comedy. Here’s why that’s a superior choice.

Gross Out/Angry Comedy Characters Must Be Unlikable

Think about how gross out comedies and angry comedies work. They work on the principle of schadenfreude -- that is, they work because the audience derives joy from seeing the character suffer. Still, funny is funny right? Well, not really. There is a price to pay for basing humor on schadenfreude. Before an audience will find it funny that a particular character suffers, the audience must feel that the punishment is warranted. That means that the director must fill the movie with nasty people doing nasty things to each other just so they can become the butt of various jokes. Otherwise, the movie feels mean spirited, if innocent characters suffer. It is exceedingly difficult to lose oneself in a film when one doesn’t like the characters.

And since the point of gross out/angry comedies is to generate shock at the punishments inflicted, either because of how painful they appear or how gross they are, the filmmakers really cannot make the punishments fit the crime. They must instead make the “crime” fit the punishment. If they don’t do this, they will run afoul of the human desire for proportionality; as a race, we are uncomfortable with excessive punishments. Thus, the filmmaker must either find some “crime” that mirrors the punishment, which is difficult to do when you’re looking for the grossest shocks you can find, or they must set out to make their characters so nasty that the audience doesn’t feel the least bit queasy or uncomfortable with the punishment.

Rat Race, on the other hand, follows more classical comedic concepts. That means likable characters subject to classical morality. Good deeds get rewarded, bad deeds are always punished, and the punishment always fits the crime both in terms of proportionality but also in terms of mirroring the crime -- an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Thus, greed is punished by an equal loss. Gluttony is punished with deprivation. Arrogance is punished with humiliation. Secrecy is punished with exposure. And it is precisely because the punishment does fit the crime that we not only feel satisfied by the punishment (which is not always the case in the angry/gross out films) but we never feel “guilty” about seeing the character punished. Further, except when the character misbehaves, there is no need in a classical comedy to make them out to be unlikable.

Making Characters Unlikable Limits The Types Of Humor That Can Be Used

Not only do unlikable characters make it harder for the audience to get into a story, but the use of unlikable characters dramatically limits the types of humor the director can employ.

For example, in Rat Race many of the jokes work because of the innocence of the characters. Take Whoopie Goldberg: her character is presented as likable and hopelessly naive. She is in Vegas to meet her grown daughter for the first time (having given her up for adoption). She envisions the daughter being a sweet young woman, and that is how the daughter presents herself. . . until she answers her cell phone. Then she turns into the dragon lady from hell. She is a Type A business woman with a penchant for ripping the heads off her employees. When she finishes the conversation, she crushes the cell phone. Whoopie innocently and sympathetically says, “Oh honey, you broke your phone.” Without missing a beat, the daughter smiles and cheerfully says, “It’s ok, I carry extras.” This is a funny moment. But it only works because we like these characters. They are good people with bizarrely outrageous flaws. And since they are generally good, and the flaws are outrageously presented, they are really funny to us.

Compare that with an angry comedy like Tropic Thunder, where these same outrageous flaws are presented as the standard personality of the characters. If Ben Stiller were to deliver the daughter’s line about having a spare cell phone, we would not find it funny because it wouldn’t appear to be an outlandish moment, we would instead view it as mere confirmation that he’s an unlikable ass. Thus, the humor is lost.

Gross Out/Angry Comedies Cannot Do Introspective Humor

Moreover, because we do like the characters in Rat Race, we can sympathize with them. Thus, Rat Race has available to it, another whole type of humor that it can exploit that angry comedies cannot: introspective humor. In other words, unlike angry comedies, Rat Race can derive humor from the experiences the audience has in common with the characters in the movies.

Whoopie discovers that her now-grown daughter is not the sweet little girl she expected. Lovitz lies to his family about being in a race because he wants to get rich so that he doesn’t have to work at Home Depo. Cuba Gooding Jr. is hiding from the world after making a fool of himself on television. Breckin Meyer discovers that there is an unexpected side to the girl he likes, Amy Smart, and that makes him adventurous. These are all experiences we have had in one form or another. And by exaggerating these experiences on screen, the writers let us re-live them vicariously in a more harmless way, and we get to laugh at the way we acted at the time. Thus, the humor becomes very personal.

The angry/gross out comedies, on the other hand, cannot do this because the audience never sympathizes with the characters, because the characters must be seen to be assholes so that the audience does not object to the periodic punishments. This prevents us from ever seeing our own experiences being played out by the characters because we don’t associate ourselves with the jerks we see on the screen. (As an aside, many gross out/angry comedies attach a redemption theme at the end of the movie in an attempt to inject this type of humor, so that you leave the theater believing that you did like the characters after all.)

Moreover, since we can sympathize with the Rat Race characters, we can put ourselves into their plight. This manifests itself in us rooting for each team to overcome whatever obstacles they encounter to get to Silver City. And that presents yet another fertile ground for comedy. Each of these obstacles turns out to be things that we have all encountered, things that have frustrated us before -- like fully booked flights or long lines at rental counters. And since we don’t need to hate these characters, we can feel their frustrations. That’s where Rat Race gets very clever in its writing.

Rat Race zigs when it should zag, just to frustrate us. Then it zigs again, to push us further. And just as we reach the breaking point, it drops a perfectly timed joke on us to defuse everything.

For example: who hasn’t been in a hurry only to be stuck at a counter with a slow clerk? We all have, and we all know the frustration. So when Whoopie and her daughter end up stuck in the rental car line, we can instantly sympathize. And since this is a race, our frustration is compounded. But we’re not ready for the joke yet. When they finally get to the counter, and we assume they are over their hurdle, the film doubles down on our frustration: the clerk turns out to be the world’s dumbest trainee. . . and who can’t relate to that moment? So you are further frustrated, but you also laugh at the situation -- not because you are laughing at the two women, with whom you sympathize, but because you are laughing at all the times this happened to you and how frustrated you felt (only to realize that in hindsight, getting upset was pretty silly). But that’s not the joke. The joke comes a moment later, just as your frustration reaches its peak, when the clerk states that they have a car available. Suddenly, without missing a beat, Whoopie asks, “what color is it?” And this totally ridiculous question, asked at the right moment, makes you burst out laughing and makes all of your frustration disappears, making your joy all the greater.

Gross out/angry films can’t duplicate this because you can’t sympathize with the characters. Indeed, they know this. So they don’t even try to gain your sympathy. Instead, they use these moments to allow the angry characters to erupt to demonstrate how frustrated they are. Thus the joke, rather than being based on our own experiences, is based on the ability of the actor to amuse us with their ranting.

Thus, classic comedy is capable of using more types of humor and particularly more internalized/personal humor, than modern gross out/angry comedies.

Conclusion

Rat Race not only is a classic comedy, it is a well done classical comedy. The jokes are well set up and unexpected, and they pay off handsomely. The actors give you characters you simply will not forget. There are lines you will remember (“siphoning gas is not a smoting offense”), scenes you will remember (Pepto-Bismol), and you will go away from this movie smiling. It may not be deep or philosophical, but it’s absolutely worth your time.