Prime Time: Rat Race (2001)

With Jerry Zucker in the director's chair and a whole load of talented comedic performers in front of the camera, Rat Race certainly sets itself up as a film that wants to be in the top tier of modern comedies. The fact that it isn't, and the fact that it fails by such a large margin, is as surprising as it is disappointing.

The main premise is very simple, and very similar to another whacky comedy from decades ago, one that made use of an all-star cast. A group of people are selected to participate in a race to a locker some distance away. The first person to get there will get to keep the contents of the locker. $2M. It's that simple. Yes, this is basically a reworking of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

There are moments that work in Rat Race, and some of those moments provide some hearty laughs. Jon Lovitz and Kathy Najimy bundling their two kids into a car that once belonged to Adolf Hitler pans out pretty much as you think it would, and is a real highlight, and there's a fun cameo from Kathy Bates, playing a woman obsessively trying to get people to buy one of her squirrels. A bus full of Lucille Ball fans also provides some fun. But there are so many other moments that either don't work as well as they should or just don't work entirely. The characters played by Seth Green and Vince Vieluf don't work, and neither do those played by Whoopi Goldberg and Lanei Chapman. Breckin Meyer and Amy Smart are helped by the script, although hindered by the fact that they're, well, Breckin Meyer and Amy Smart (to be fair, Meyer isn't as bad as Smart . . . but few actors are). Cuba Gooding Jr. is just fine, as is Rowan Atkinson, and John Cleese is helped along by super-white, larger, teeth to define his character.

Perhaps hampered by the script from Andy Breckman, Zucker feels like he could have been replaced by anyone in the director's chair. There's no sign of someone monitoring quality control, there's no sign of anyone taking on the responsibility to make the best of every comedy moment. All you get is a star vehicle without any big enough stars, but it's also very much a time capsule from 2001. From the cast to the plotting, despite it hewing so close to that 1963 movie mentioned above, and to the inclusion of Smash Mouth in the finale (not just a song, they get to make a cameo appearance and interact with all of the main players).

While it's not a film I'd recommend to anyone in the mood for a modern comedy, it IS a film I'd recommend to anyone looking for some easy entertainment that keeps throwing enough at the wall that one or two bits should stick. You can find a multitude of better comedies out there, but this is for people who want some recognisable faces and a general sense of familiarity (Atkinson, for example, is doing little more than a Mr. Bean act with an accent on top of his usual schtick). Passable enough. Just not often very good.

5/10

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Go (1999)

Directed by Doug Liman, and written by John August, Go is often described to people as a teen version of Pulp Fiction. Seriously, you'll find that phrase in almost every major review of the movie, so I decided not to buck the trend here. It's got drugs, some violence, plenty of dark humour, a great soundtrack, and a few main events shown from the viewpoints of different characters, which all means that the comparison point is a good one, even if Pulp Fiction is itself hugely influenced by a multitude of movies to have come before it.

Anyway, let me try to describe the various escapades. First of all, we get Ronna (Sarah Polley) looking to make some quick money as she faces eviction over the Christmas holiday season. She seizes her chance when a couple of guys (Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr) come into her work looking for her colleague, Simon (Desmond Askew). Simon often sells drugs so when these two potential customers start to enquire about any other potential supply avenues, Ronna decides to arrange a sale. She then has to buy product from dealer Todd Gaines (Timothy Olyphant), which puts her at serious risk if anything goes wrong during the proposed exchange. Things go wrong. Meanwhile, Simon is having a blast in Las Vegas with his friends (Taye Diggs, Breckin Meyer and James Duval). Vegas is such a glorious place to be, as long as nothing goes wrong. Things go wrong. There's more to discover here, but part of the joy of the film is finding out how the tales are interconnected and just what changes when seen from a different viewpoint.

Liman and August do a fantastic job here, keeping the energy levels up without the film every feeling hyperactive, and peppering conversations with great lines and references without it feeling overly-stylised. They also take a number of standard situations that we've seen done many times before and manage to give each one a twist, often weaving confidently between the sublie and the ridiculous. All of this would be impossible if it wasn't for the fantastic ensemble cast, taking the material and elevating every bit of it.

Polley, Wolf, Mohr, Askew and Diggs have rarely been better, and Olyphant is as great as he always is. Then we have William Fichtner as a slightly strange lawman, Jane Krakowski as his equally strange wife, Nathan Bexton as a pill-popper who hallucinates about conversations with cats and dancing with strangers to the Macarena, and even Katie Holmes does okay in her role. There's even a small, fun role for Melissa McCarthy that's worth looking out for.

There's one character I have yet to mention, and that is the soundtrack. Jam-packed with cracking tunes, Go has one of the best soundtracks of the 1990s. It's one that I listen to a lot, and it's also one that perfectly complements the visual style of the film. From the opening Columbia Pictures logo to the closing credits, this is another film that proves just how important the perfect song choice can be.

It's worth noting that what I find fun and cool could just as easily be viewed as tiresome and annoying by someone else. This is a film I used to recommend heartily to everyone until I started to realise that not everyone was won over by it in the same way as I was. I still heartily recommend it, but now do so with the standard, usually unspoken, proviso: No film is for everyone.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Go-Special-Sarah-Polley/dp/0767835093/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1418650151&sr=1-2&keywords=go

The Craft (1996)

The Craft is a lot of fun. In fact, for a horror movie aimed at teenaged girls it's probably more fun than many people expected it to be. I used to love it. Rewatching it nowadays, however, reminds me of just how light and fluffy it all is. There are dark moments, undeniably, but a lot of the movie plays out like an extended episode of My First Coven (or My Little Crony, if you will). I still enjoy it, and it's so much better than any post-millennial horror movies aimed at teenage girls that I can think of, but it has, pardon the pun, lost some of its charm.

Robin Tunney plays Sarah, the new girl in town, a girl who eventually finds acceptance from a trio comprised of Neve Campbell, Rachel True and their nominal leader, Fairuza Balk. It turns out that the three girls have been just waiting for a fourth. They dabble in witchcraft, you see, and with the right fourth person they could really tap into some strong stuff. Or so they hope. As it turns out, they're correct. What starts off as a bit of fun - revenge against a bully, a love spell - soon turns darker and more dangerous. Sarah decides that enough is enough, but the other three girls have other ideas. If Sarah isn't with them . . . . . . . . . then she's against them.

Mixing in some witchcraft with standard teen fare, The Craft has one major plus point going for it, two if you count the decent, for the time, special effects, and that's the cast. Robin Tunney is actually the weakest member of the cast, but does okay in the main role. The second weakest member of the cast is Neve Campbell, unconvincing as a young woman who has spent so many years dealing with some major scar tissue all over her body before finding a way to look beautiful and feel confident. Rachel True is quite good, always convincing as someone genuinely conflicted by the power being used by the group, and both Christine Taylor and Skeet Ulrich are enjoyable as two very different kinds of assholes. Breckin Meyer is fun to watch, but he's only in a couple of scenes and only doing the schtick that he's done in almost every other movie that he's starred in. Then there's Fairuza Balk. Balk is fantastic throughout, it's hard to take your eyes off her. She's one of the most interesting, and fun, villains to be found in any horror movie from the '90s. You just know that her background isn't a warm and happy one, a lot of her behaviour is made up of standard defence mechanisms, but she still has good intentions even when things start turning bad.

Director Andrew Fleming doesn't take any risks, but he does just fine with the pacing of the movie and the various set-pieces. The runtime is approximately 100 minutes, the story is set up very quickly and there aren't too many moments that feel as if they're just padding. Mind you, this may be due more to the fact that Peter Filardi wrote a relatively fat-free script sprinkled with some good one-liners.

It may go without saying, but fans of Charmed will want to check this one out. And fans of teen movies that are given a hint of darkness. Oh, and fans of Fairuza Balk.

6/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Craft-DVD-Robin-Tunney/dp/B000050GQ7/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382040150&sr=8-1&keywords=the+craft