RAT RACE

Remember those epic ’60s comedies like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with the caricature posters of the star-studded cast running like crazy? Remember those wacky Zucker brothers spoofs like Airplane! that were actually funny?

If so, then Rat Race will put you in a foul mood. Apparently director Jerry Zucker wanted to “reimagine” the above-mentioned Stanley Kramer classic, and so a bunch of unappealing dolts set out from Las Vegas at the behest of casino czar Donald Sinclair (John Cleese, what gives?) in a mad scamper to claim a million bucks in a train-station locker. Along the way we get such comic highlights as Cuba Gooding Jr. hijacking a busload of Lucy impersonators (the surreal potential lost in crude humor that was old in 1963) and Rowan Atkinson in a loathsome role as an Italian idiot (think Topo Gigio in the Roberto Benigni role in Down by Law) molesting an infant in diapers. Ho ho! The biggest laugh might be when Kathy Bates, the Jonathan Winters of the new millennium, directs Whoopi Goldberg and Lanai Chapman over a cliff. Too bad the rest of the cast couldn’t join them.

— Peter Keough