Rat Race

Rat Race is an example of a very purile, silly comedy film. And yet I find it absolutely brilliant. It’s a film about a group of people who are told that there is $2 million sitting in a bag in New Mexico and the first person to reach the locker from Las Vegas will keep it all. Naturally, hilarious scenarios unfold on screen which will be guaranteed to make you laugh at least once.

With a cast that many people will recognise, Rat Race is a very good example of how enjoyable a comedy film can be. Starring Rowan Atkinson, Breckin Meyer, Whoopi Goldberg, Seth Green, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jon Lovitz and John Cleese, Rat Race has a cast that many people will be able to enjoy. The scenarios that the actors get involved with are so unpredictable that you just don’t see them coming. From Cuba Gooding Jr. trying to take a taxi to New Mexico and ending up driving full of Lucille Ball  enthusiasts, to Jon Lovitz gatecrashing a Veterans meeting in Hitler’s car and Whoopi Goldberg breaking the land-speed record with her estranged daughter, there is so much unpredictability that the comedy flows brilliantly.

The nature of the film is such that each character’s fate is presented in an order, so you are shown what is happening to each character one after the other. Because there are so many characters, by the time you see each one again you realise that it has been a while since you last saw them, and almost laugh at the introduction of them again. Rat Race manages to deal with the problems around this very well though. You never feel like there are too many characters, and (although there probably are too many characters), the way the film brings them all in is perfect.

Rowan Atkinson, who I feel is one of the greatest British comedic actors ever, is absolutely side-splitting here, and despite having seen the film countless times I always find myself laughing the most at his parts. What makes it even better is his comedy Italian accent. He has obviously exaggerated it for comedic effect, and it does come across as very funny. Also, there are so many of Rowan Atkinson’s lines that are repeatable that the film will leave a couple of quotes in your memory bank.

All the other actors are pretty funny too, especially Jon Lovitz, but I found Seth Green and Vince Vieluf to be fairly annoying. I’m not the biggest fan of Seth Green as an actor and have never seen Vieluf in anything before or after this. Their storyline is fairly amusing, but Green’s character is inherently selfish throughout the film (right up until the end) and this makes me go off him a bit and feel that maybe he deserves his nightmare journey to New Mexico.

The whole film has a bit of a ‘well you just couldn’t make that up’ atmosphere to it, and this is why it is so funny. The scenarios that happen seem perfectly plausible on screen but when you step back and think about it they are utterly ridiculous. Obviously in a comedy film, plausible ridiculousness is what is aimed for, and Rat race achieves this very well. I cannot work out though whether I am biased towards Rat Race because of how much I enjoyed it the first time I watched it.

If I had one criticism of the film then it would be that some of the actors do not actually play a character wholly different from most of the characters they otherwise play. Breckin Meyer plays the nice guy who never takes a risk, Seth Green plays the moody teenager-esque bloke, John Cleese is the eccentric hotel owner (now which hugely successful British sitcom does that remind you of?) and Rowan Atkinson, although funny, is funny in the same way he normally is. In terms of the cast, it is impressive but not astounding.

However, despite this I am fairly confident that Rat Race will have you laughing at least once. If you are not made of stone then you should find yourself giggling along to the hilarious scenes unfolding in front of you. I rate Rat Race very highly and thoroughly recommend that you give it a watch. 

Pearl Harbor

An awful lot of people really don’t like Pearl Harbor. I didn't really understand why until I saw the film. It’s awful. I went in expecting a historical drama with a couple of American heroes who tragically die and which left me drained but with an appreciation for those involved. Instead I found myself watching a romantic film where two best friends are divided over one young nurse. It just so happens that they are in Pearl Harbor. The film is about three hours long, but very little of that is actually depicting the Japanese attack.

There are so many criticisms of this film that I don’t think it would be possible to cover them here. Instead of producing a historical film with a romance in the middle of it, Michael Bay manages to create a romantic film with a couple of planes in it. It is so typically Michael Bay that it becomes cheesy and then what should be a serious film becomes a bit of a joke. And the historical inaccuracies in the film are unbelievable. They are too numerous to even go into here, but believe me, who ever researched that project should have been fired immediately. At times you forget that you are watching a film about the reason why America got involved in World War Two and seem to find yourself watching a film about a group of soldiers who are all in love with a group of nurses. At one point there was a line “I think World War Two just started”, and this is shockingly poor.

And it’s not even like the acting is good but the film is let down by the direction. Ben Afleck takes the lead role in this film as Rafe McCawley but is so unbelievable that the story around him, his girlfriend and his best friend becomes beyond incredulous. I don’t want to get into an in-depth character analysis but the idea of bringing in a back-story to the childhoods of the two soldiers is a poor attempt to engage the audience in the characters. I quite like Ben Afleck generally, but in Pearl Harbor it is almost like he has turned up to an exam having revised the night before. I mean no Michael Bay actor is going to win an Academy Award, but Ben Afleck does not engage with the audience at all. No part of me was rooting for him or the other soldiers at any point, and instead I found myself watching with mild disinterest as their lives unfolded and some planes attacked them.

Kate Beckinsale is well cast in Pearl Harbor and fits the part she is trying to play almost perfectly. It is a shame then that the character she does play is as transparent as both of the men she falls in love with. Obviously when one man goes missing in action it is natural to try and move on, but by anyone’s standards, the best friend might be a line too far. It is also a shame that the character she plays requires next to no acting effort to complete. I was very disappointed with her role in this film, and once again, I thought the film detracted too much from the conflict and became more about the group of nurses and their relationships. I don’t even want to talk about Josh Hartnett as the other soldier in this love triangle, because he too is so unbelievable that it is painful. Come the end of the film (which couldn't come fast enough) I don’t care what happens to the characters and instead find myself tolerating the frankly boring scenes just before the credits.

The only good thing about this film is Cuba Gooding Jr. who plays one of the staff on one of the ships and becomes so angered by the Japanese attack that he climbs atop a turret and shoots down a plane. Much in the same way that the best bits of The Rock have Sean Connery in them, the more redeeming scenes of Pearl Harbor (and there are very few) have Cuba Gooding in them.

Michael Bay is obviously aiming for a cinematic epic to rival some of the greatest war films out there, with his own special touch added in. However, he misses the mark so spectacularly that the film pales into insignificance. ‘Pearl Harbor’ is a misleading title as well, because there is a good hour either side of the attack which is unrelated to what you expect from the title of the film. Personally, I think Michael Bay gets the overall tone of the film completely wrong. One major criticism of Titanic is that it puts a romance into a serious historical event, but with Pearl Harbor the romance becomes the centrepiece, whereas in Titanic, much more of a focus is on the sinking ship.

There are more critical reviews of Pearl Harbor out there, and there is no doubt that it deserves most of the criticism. If someone offers to watch Pearl Harbor with you, say no. Avoid it at all costs. It is Michael Bay’s worst film. If you are expecting a historical depiction of Pearl Harbor you will be disappointed, and if you are expecting a romance story you will be disappointed too. Pearl Harbor is drawn out, long and in my opinion sets the benchmark for what a bad film should be judged by.