I've noticed a trend in my reviews that shows that the more I like a movie, the shorter and less interesting the review turns out to be. If this observation holds true, this promises to be one of my briefest and worst reviews ever.

Start your stop watch, because you're gonna be done here and back to watching Regis and Kelly before that KFC commercial is even finished.

I mean, what is there to say about Rat Race, really, besides that it is the second nominee for the prestigious...

From the first time that I saw the preview for Rat Race, I knew that it was going to kick my ass. In a way, it's been kicking my ass since the first time that I sat, slack jawed and entranced, watching it on a lazy TBS Saturday afternoon in the mid-'80s.

As anyone who's been bored enough to peruse the misreviews Top and Bottom 10 Films of All Time knows, the 1963 all-star road-rage extravaganza It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is, in our opinion, one of the finest cinematic epics ever committed to film. This is no small feat, considering our legendarily short attention spans, and the fact that this movie is just over three hours long, with a plot consisting entirely of "Who can get to the money first?"

That's it. No deeper subplots or hidden meanings. No redeeming social value at all. It's basically a vehicle for every wrinkled up old comedian who had ever stood in front of a camera from the dawn of time up until the Johnson administration to engage in a 192 minute chase scene.

Rat Race is perhaps the best remake of a movie, made by anyone, ever, period.

Rat Race takes Mad Mad World's elegantly simplistic driving force (no pun intended), and manages to completely capture the spirit of the original film without resorting to using any of the same gags. You don't leave the theater going "Okay, so Seth Green was supposed to be Buddy Hackett's character, but the shtick with the drunk pilot was funnier when he did it."

The movie starts with the best opening credits sequence since Inspector Gadget. All of the characters from the movie cavort around the screen in big-headed, paper-cutout, Terry-Gilliam-animation looking forms. Oddly enough, Wayne Knight looks exactly the same caricatured as he does in real life. Anyway, you haven't laughed until you've seen a South Parkian Cuba Gooding Jr. shaking his groove thing.

The movie begins in a Las Vegas casino, where a sleepily paced exposition introduces us a group of mismatched comedic stereotypes, all invited to participate in a special challenge via special Wonkaesque gold coins dispersed in various slot machines.

A short meeting with eccentric casino owner John Cleese lays out the slightly modified plot. There's two million dollars in a train station locker in Silver City, New Mexico, and the first one to get to it, keeps it.

Simplicity. Pure comic simplicity. It's the screenplay equivalent to Giotto's perfect circle drawn for the Pope.

I really don't want to say much more than that. All of the fun in this wacky, madcap adventure comes from watching a group of wacky madcap people end up in wacky madcap situations through their own wacky madcap stupidity. The more you know ahead of time, the less you'll enjoy it when it happens. This isn't an elaborately constructed comedic maze, fraught with clever wordplay and historical significance. This is Seth Green squirting a guy in the face with the udder of a cow hanging upside down from an awol hot air balloon.

In fact, if I have one criticism of the movie, it's that it frequently doesn't move fast enough to keep ahead of its own jokes, and you find yourself going "Okay, you can stop setting this joke up now. I'm ready for it, Jerry, let's have it."

Apparently the official Paramount Rat Race web site doesn't realize this, as you can go there and get complete listings of exactly what vehicles each character uses to travel to Silver City, as well as their ultimate modes of destruction. How dumb are they? Or conversely, how dumb do they think that we are? Do they think that we need to study up on what's going to happen before we go, so that we don't miss the subtle nuances of this retarded human cartoon? Come on people, it isn't Henry V for cryin' out loud.

This is the most fun summer fluff movie you'll see all year. If I were director Jerry Zucker, I would find Tim Burton, give him an open handed bitch slap and say, "THIS is how you remake a movie, Gloom Boy! So there, so HA!"

You know what, Breckin Meyer? I don't care HOW sexy a girl is, after you've seen her dive bomb her boyfriend's car with a helicopter and leave him for dead in the desert, you DON'T try to hook up with her. That's just common sense. Hell, that's a basic sense of self-preservation.

Anyway, It's good to see that Smashmouth's deal with Satan is continues to be going strong, and they are still contractually obligated to sing a song in every single movie that comes out.