RUNNING GAGS WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND, AND THE BIG CHASE COMEDY IS BACK WITH 'RAT RACE'.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

In the '60s and early '70s, Americans bought millions of tickets to big-cast chase comedies, guffawing at the calamity, tittering at the compromising positions and actually enjoying all the excessive mugging.

There were so many of them that, rather than list them all, we'll just refer to them collectively as ``It's a Mad, Mad, Great Gumball Rally of a Cannonball Race in Flying Machines and Jaunty Jalopies Around the Mad, Mad World in 80 Days.''

Then the genre was shelved because it had run its course, or maybe because of the end of the studio contract system that had allowed producers to hire a good number of name stars such as Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Natalie Wood within a reasonable budget.

Now Paramount Pictures is bringing the ensemble chase comedy out of retirement, aiming for the broad spectrum of moviegoers old enough to be nostalgic about the '60s and those too young to realize it's been done before. No doubt the studio was encouraged by audience fervor for reality TV shows that test individual thresholds of pain, malice and destruction in the name of greed.

``Rat Race'' stars John Cleese as Donald Sinclair, a Las Vegas casino owner who has come up with a novel contest to tantalize his favorite high rollers: He has stashed six gold coins in slot machines in his hotel, and the winners of those coins will be eligible to race to Silver City, N.M., and try to be first to collect $2 million in a duffel bag in a train depot locker. While the racers pursue the cash, Sinclair and his bettors track their progress electronically, their wagers locked in before the firing of the starting pistol.

The coin winners - and they are in so many ways losers - include Owen Templeton (Cuba Gooding Jr.), an NFL referee infamous for a recent bad call; two-bit grifting brothers Duane and Blaine Cody (Seth Green and Vince Vileuf); family vacationers Randy and Beverly Pear (Jon Lovitz and Kathy Najimy); uptight young lawyer Nick Shaffer (Breckin Meyer); narcoleptic Italian tourist Mr. Pollini (Rowan Atkinson); and Vera Baker (Whoopi Goldberg), who has just reunited with her long-lost daughter, Merrill (Lanai Chapman).

``There's only one rule,'' Sinclair tells them. ``There are no rules!''

Conventional air travel is ruled out immediately, thanks to the Cody brothers, so the teams head out by every other means possible for Silver City. Sinclair needn't engineer any hazards for them along the way; they're all perfectly capable of finding their own - a busload of Lucille Ball look-alikes, neo-Nazis, monster trucks, cows and Kathy Bates in an unbilled cameo as an eccentric squirrel rancher.

Similar - but different

Director Jerry Zucker, best-known for ``Airplane!'' and ``Ghost,'' said he understands the inevitable comparison of ``Rat Race'' to ``It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' and all the others, but it was not those that he modeled this movie after.

``All those movies had sort of the same form and so, in a sense, we owe something to ('Mad, Mad World'),'' Zucker said. ``But I never sought to emulate it. In my mind I was thinking more about the older classic comedies, the way Jacques Tati or Buster Keaton or Abbott and Costello set up their jokes and paid them off, how meticulous they were in the way they set up their visual humor, whereas I felt 'Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' was just a lot of gonzo yelling and screaming and destruction.''

``It's an epic comedy, which nobody has tried to do (in a long time),'' veteran writer and actor Cleese said. ``There was an energy about (chase comedies) that was very attractive, but, you see, they're pricey, and they're also scary because so few people can direct comedy, so few people can do it.''

The script was originated by ex-``Saturday Night Live'' writer Andy Breckman, and polished by Breckman and Zucker. Lovitz recalled one of Breckman's ``SNL'' sketches in which Lovitz hopped in the back of a New York cab driven by guest host John Lithgow, declaring he had 10 minutes to make it to his wedding - in Los Angeles. ``Hold on!'' said Lithgow, putting the pedal to the metal.

``That's Andy's sense of humor, very whimsical and silly,'' Lovitz said.

Monty Python veteran Cleese praised Bates' scene and its payoff as ``the funniest thing I'd ever seen on paper.''

Amy Smart, who plays Tracy, the helicopter pilot who hooks up with Nick, said ``Rat Race'' stood apart from other comedy projects she's seen or made recently, such as Tom Green's ``Road Trip.''

``It was definitely different from what was being made,'' Smart said. ``It was fun to see this kind of comedy, to be honest with you, because we read so many sort of gross-out ...''

``... teen sex comedies,'' said Meyer, another ``Road Trip'' survivor. ``And been in them. Been in many of them. Been in all of them.''

Zucker said that, beyond having a funny script, the key to the movie's humor lies in both well-engineered sight gags - some of them took months to plan out - and a cast that genuinely knows how to act, not just to deliver one-liners that leave you waiting for that ba-da-boom rim shot.

``No matter how good a job I do on the set of executing the sight gags, you're not going to be laughing if you're not believing the actors in that situation,'' he said. ``I think not casting the movie right is death.''

He allowed the actors to bring their own touches to the roles, such as Lovitz's knack for improvisation, Smart's untold motivations she applied to Tracy's airborne jealous rampage, and Cleese's flashy, intimidating teeth he had crafted by his own dentist for the part before even meeting the director.

Green said he and Vileuf couldn't believe how down-to-earth the big celebrities in the cast were. ``We kept coming home at the end of each day going, 'I cannot believe the day we just had,' between risking our lives and hanging out with these huge influences to both of us.''

Vileuf said he began the shoot somewhat intimidated by working with Cleese, a longtime idol of his, until Cleese broke the ice.

Fun guy

``I was passing by his trailer, and I'm, like, peeking in there like he's a hunchback, you know? And he was, like, 'I was just doing an anagram with your name,' '' Vileuf said. ``And he's, like, 'Your name can mean FUN EVIL VICE.' ''

The age range of the company should help broaden the film's appeal. There's Cleese (60) and Goldberg (51) for the boomers, Green of ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' Meyer and Smart (all mid-20s) for the teens and 20-somethings, and Gooding (33) representing the Gen-X crowd.

``I think it's the first movie I've done comedy-wise - first of all that's probably not a teen comedy - but it was the first one that I could tell my mom, 'Seriously, you'll like it. I don't have to explain anything. You'll just like it,' '' Meyer said.

``It's the first one that I could guarantee my parents and their friends can go see without buying tickets to another movie and sneaking in, embarrassed.''

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) THE RACE IS ON

`Rat Race' puts oddballs on the run in a return to the ensemble chase comedy

(2) Whoopi Goldberg as Vera Baker, far right, appears with waitresses Corinne Jones, left, and Jane Walsh.

(3) Cuba Gooding Jr. with a Lucy look-alike in the treasure-hunting comedy reminiscent of `It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.''

(4) Seth Green appears as Duane Cody in `Rat Race,'' directed by Jerry Zucker.