Line #29 YMMV/RatRace


1	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The way the soundtrack uses classical music for some of the funniest scenes just makes them even funnier.
2	** "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" - played while Duane and Blaine Cody sabotage an entire airport.
3	** "Ride Of The Valkyries" - a remix is played with Tracy Faucet chasing a truck down a highway in a helicopter.
4	** "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" - played while the Cody brothers pursue the hardware store guy in a hot air balloon.
5	* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: The scene with the prostitute seems like one (until the rich guys appear, revealing the purpose was learning how much she'd bill for the [[ComicSutra very weird sex act]]) - [[ChekhovsGunman until it's revealed she took the money bag from the station]]!
6	* CrossesTheLineTwice: So many times.
7	** Pollini being [[MistakenForPedophile mistaken for a pedophile]] because his hand is in a baby's clothes looking for his key? Uncomfortable. Him exclaiming "[[InnocentInnuendo I think I am touching it]]" when the parents see him? Hilarious.
8	** The Jewish family's daughter shitting out of a moving car window? Gross. The GilliganCut to them stopped by the police while another officer wipes the cruiser's window? Side splitting.
9	** The squirrel lady tricking Vera and Merrill into driving off a cliff? Creepy. The sight of signs set up on the way down reading "You should have bought a squirrel" before they crash into a pile of ''other'' cars at the bottom? Hilarious.
10	** Amy's boyfriend cheating on her and her yelling at him? Not funny. Amy driving the helicopter so low his pool bursts apart from the wind pressure and she chases him down the highway in his truck with the helicopter? Very funny.
11	** Randy and the Hitlermobile, full stop. It begins with a Jewish family accidentally going to a Nazi museum because it's advertised as a "Barbie" museum, and their daughter thinks it's for the doll and not the SS officer Klaus Barbie. When they leave and find another racer trashed their car, they steal Adolf Hitler's touring car the museum had on display outside. They get attacked by a biker gang, during which Randy smears lipstick on his upper lip to resemble a mustache and burns his tongue and his middle finger with a cigarette lighter so he can't talk properly. Finally, they drive the car through a fence into a ''World War II veteran celebration festival'' where Randy goes up on stage - with a small amount of dark lipstick smeared on his upper-lip that looks like a toothbrush mustache - and tries to explain himself, but thanks to his burnt tongue he can only talk in garbled mumbles that sound vaguely German, ''and'' he shows them his burnt finger in a way that looks like he's flipping them all off. The scene ends with one of the vets ''actually shooting at him''. Forget crossing the line twice, they're playing double dutch with it.[[note]]In addition to the jump rope variant, "Double Dutch" can also mean gibberish, including German-sounding gibberish like Charlie Chaplin used in ''Film/TheGreatDictator.''[[/note]] Oh, and Randy's actor, Creator/JonLovitz, is Jewish.
12	** Once the heart for transplant is out of its freezer, there's plenty of it, such as when the courier thinks it got damaged by a dog, and starts describing what will happen once it's inside the chest, complete with a defibrilator routine.
13	* DesignatedVillain: Donald Sinclair. He doesn't tell the racers he and a bunch of other millionaires are betting on them, and some of the bets they do make come off as kind of callous, but he's otherwise totally upfront about the conditions of the race, he's polite to the racers, doesn't sabotage or impede them in any way, really does have a cash prize waiting for them, and isn't directly responsible for any of the problems the racers run into [[spoiler: including not getting the money]]. Yet at the end [[spoiler: him getting shamed into donating millions of dollars he wasn't interested in donating to charities is treated like a moral victory instead of incredibly unfair.]]
14	* DoNotDoThisCoolThing: Tracy says that her revenge on her cheating boyfriend "violated about a hundred and fifteen federal laws", and she and Nick have to quickly flee to avoid the cops. But there's no denying it's an awesome scene, and makes the idea of such elaborate revenge look quite appealing.
15	* EndingFatigue: The film drags on after the stage lights at the charity event light up, saddling the film with a feel-good ending that is completely at odds with the rest of the film's tone. Just showing the successful racers had just stumbled into a charity event and suggesting they would lose their winnings this way would have been a sharper, better punch-line to close the film on than even Sinclair getting his comeuppance.
16	* EsotericHappyEnding: As noted under ShaggyDogStory on the main page, the [[{{SugarWiki/WAFF}} feel-good]] and [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments heartwarming]] ending scene, complete with LaserGuidedKarma for Sinclair and his buddies, probably won't be as happy for all involved a while after the credits stop rolling.
17	* FanPreferredCutContent: Many fans wish the deleted scenes where the Creator/LucilleBall fans meet their {{Distaff Counterpart}}s and the high rollers play Monopoly had stayed in. Both have some good humor and would have helped the plot in minor ways. The first scene explains how Owen got away from the angry fans and whether those women make it to their convention, while the second scene makes it harder to guess that Vicki the call girl will be a ChekhovsGunman.
18	* GeniusBonus: The prize of $2 million is approximately what the $350,000 from ''Film/ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'' would've been worth in 2001.
19	* HilariousInHindsight:
20	** Millionaires offering life-changing amounts of money to people in hopes they do things for their entertainment? Wait a minute, is this a loose-remake of ''Film/ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'', or a ''WebVideo/MrBeast'' video?
21	** The premise of "Rat Race" predates the resurgence of the DeadlyGame in TheNewTens and TheNewTwenties.
22	* HarsherInHindsight: The scene with the Cody brothers sabotaging the airport radar system and causing all airline flights to be suddenly cancelled could be regarded as this, considering this film was released in theaters one month before 9/11. Doubles up as ValuesDissonance for viewers in the post-9/11 world are almost surprised not to see the brothers surrounded by a SWAT team for trespassing and tampering with airport facilities.
23	* JerkassWoobie: Owen may be quite caustic and quick to anger, but during the course of the film he's dealing with a mistake he would never live down and has a series of the most unfortunate events happen to him which can make the viewers sympathize with him.
24	* OneSceneWonder:
25	** Creator/KathyBates as the "Squirrel Lady".
26	** Creator/DeanCain as Tracy's cheating boyfriend.
27	* RetroactiveRecognition: [[Series/{{Grimm}} Monroe]] is the locksmith that steals the key from the Cody brothers.
28	* SignatureScene: One of the film's most remembered moments is Tracy's extended revenge on discovering her cheating boyfriend Sean - where she chases him down the highway in her helicopter.
29	* {{Squick}}: "But Dad, I'm ''prairie-dogging!''"
30	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The movie opens with a song by The Baha Men and closes with an extended appearance by Music/SmashMouth, and a major plot point hinges on lax pre-9/11 airport security practices. You couldn't get any more [[TurnOfTheMillennium early noughts]] than that if you tried. The cast also consists almost entirely of actors who were either at the peak of their careers or ''only'' ever had careers during the early 2000s. Had the movie included the scene with Wrestling/DiamondDallasPage AsHimself, it would have further dated the movie to the early 2000s, considering he'd become far better known for his yoga empire in the 2010s.
31	* ValuesDissonance: Owen's mortified reaction to the discovery that one of the Lucies is a crossdressing male, [[AmbiguousGenderIdentity or possibly transgender]]. It's not really elaborated on, but playing that for laughs would likely come across as being in poor taste today.
32	* TheWoobie:
33	** The entire Pear family outside of Randy, who forces them to experience a living Hell for the sake of winning the race. After spending the majority of the movie simply not telling them about ''why'' he's doing it, he drugs them when they refuse to continue following along after learning the truth. Special mention goes to poor Kimberly, who Randy forces to defecate out the window of a moving car because he won't pull over for a bathroom break.

Context YMMV / RatRace