Metacritic reviews

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.