Rat Race

Jerry Zucker directs a screenplay by Andy Breckman that openly feeds off Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World from 1963. The race was first laid out from Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas, New Mexico, and dropped over the worry that it would confuse viewers. Production began in Calgary in August 2000. Calgary highways stood in for roads in Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, the desert passages were shot at Drumheller, and the Lucy impersonator stretch in the Canadian Rockies. Many interiors went up inside 2 aircraft hangars at the former Currie Barracks, hotel rooms and green screen driving included. Ely played Silver City and the Nevada Northern Railway Museum its train station, where a 2 day shoot grew to 6. Following a habit kept since Airplane!, Zucker put his mother Charlotte Zucker in this film too, among the Lucy impersonators. Lawyer Gloria Allred appears as herself. The film was made for 48 million dollars and took 85.5 million. A good fit if you want six strands run in parallel with a separate chain of disasters for each team, and do not find it odd that all of it is tied off at a charity concert. Not for anyone uncomfortable with the stretch where the family detours to a Klaus Barbie museum and steals Hitler’s staff car.