Along with the more respectable Love, Actually, it marks the return of the epic, 'guest list' ensemble comedy.
If nothing else is true about it, Rat Race is of interest from an historical point of view. Rat Race is the last film that he has directed to date, and while it's hardly terrible, it isn't up to the standards that he once set for himself. While David Zucker and Jim Abrahams have busied themselves with the Scary Movie series and the awful An American Carol, Jerry Zucker has been relatively quiet. The stock of the team once known as Zucker, Abrahams & Zucker has fallen some way since the halcyon days of Airplane! and the Naked Gun series. While John Cleese has enjoyed the success of Fawlty Towers and Terry Gilliam has made some of the most imaginative films of the last 40 years, virtually nothing the individual Pythons have achieved has managed to surpass their work together, at least not within the minds of their paying public. It's often the case that the individual members of a creative team cannot match the success or acclaim of their collective outputs when it comes to their solo work.
