Along with a PG rating, Ontario government censors slapped audience warnings on the slapstick comedy Rat Race, so people wouldn't think this was Shakespeare.

One says: "Coarse language." Whatever, because that applies to most movies these days. The other announces: "Crude content." Absolutely right!

The censors could have also announced: "Clumsy filmmaking." Or: "Wretched writing." Or: "Abysmal overacting." Or any number of other fatal flaws and faults -- but that's what this review is for. The censors are just trying to protect fragile sensibilities. I'm trying to save you money, dignity and almost two hours of precious time.

Rat Race is crude, in any number of ways. If you have seen the trailer for this idiotic movie, you already know some of the presumed "highlights" of the piece.

They include the stunt in which a cow dangling by rope from a runaway hot air balloon slams into the windshield of a bus -- which is filled with overeager Lucille Ball impersonators on their way to an I Love Lucy convention -- while the bus driver, played by Cuba Gooding Jr., screams hysterically along with a transvestite Lucy.

Hey, if you think that's funny, you might find some of the other ridiculous pratfalls and stupid pet tricks in the movie amusing. Comedy is a personal taste experience.

I personally would rather go back and watch the antics in the 1963 Hollywood hit It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in which a gaggle of overacting movie stars spent way too long (155 minutes!!!) racing to get to a big pot of stolen money. It was silly, too, but charming. The new movie is just cynical.

In Rat Race, the money is not stolen, it's a $2-million prize posted by a Las Vegas casino owner (John Cleese). Eight people, plus strays, race from Vegas to Silver City, New Mexico (although the movie was mostly shot in Alberta, from Calgary to Drumheller and the Rockies).

In the movie, the first person to arrive by hook, crook, train, boat or plane is supposed to get all the money. What they don't know is that they are the dupes, the rats in a betting scheme involving indulgent billionaires.

What is impressive is the talent that director Jerry Zucker & Co. signed up for this. He has a couple of Oscar-winners in Gooding and Whoopi Goldberg, comics such as Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, Kathy Najimy and Jon Lovitz and such rising young actors as Breckin Meyer and Amy Smart.

But they still need something to do. Most are left floundering in awkward situations or even extreme skits. For example, Atkinson is made to look as if he is sexually molesting a baby, ha ha. And the Lovitz-Najimy duo is supposed to milk neo-Nazis and Hitler's swastika-marked car for some yucks.

These scenarios are just grotesque, wrong, tasteless and so far from funny. Like most of the movie. (More on: Rat Race).

(This film is rated PG)

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