A group of billionaires led by a Las Vegas casino owner (John Cleese) search for things to bet on. They decide to pull a group of six strangers together to race from Vegas to Silver City, New Mexico to retrieve $2 million hidden in a locker. First one there gets all of the money. The first team are two addled brothers (Seth Green and Vince Vieluf, who talks indecipherably because of a newly pierced tongue). When they cannot catch a plane, they plot to destroy an airport control tower in a very funny sequence. Their antics carry them into a hot air balloon chase that catches a cow with a dangling rope and into a monster truck competition. The second team is an estranged mother (Whoopi Goldberg) reunited with her daughter (Lanai Chapman), who is struggling to start a business. They face an insane squirrel-selling woman (Kathy Bates) and steal a rocket car scheduled for a land speed record attempt. A hated NFL referee (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) is stranded in the desert by an irate cabbie (Paul Rodriguez) and hijacks a busload of Lucille Ball look-alikes on the way to a convention. The Jewish family man (Jon Lovitz) on a family vacation joins the race without telling his wife (Kathy Najimy) why they are rushing across the country. When his daughter insists on stopping at a Barbie museum, it is without realization that it is the Klaus Barbie Nazi Museum. The escape from that location involves the theft of Hitler's personal touring car and culminates with Lovitz having his tongue burned and accidentally crashing into a WWII Veteran's convention. A narcoleptic Italian (Rowan Atkinson in his best Mr. Bean-like manner) gets a ride with an ambulance driver (Wayne Knight), who is carting a human heart for a transplant. Through various ineptitude, the heart ends up flying out of the truck's window and the two have to recover it from a playful dog. The final race member (Breckin Meyer) is a straight-laced future lawyer who at first declines to participate in the race, but re-thinks his position after he meets a smart, beautiful woman (Amy Smart who is flying a helicopter to New Mexico. He quickly finds out that she is unbalanced after she flies over her boy friend's house and starts an attack on the boy friend when she sees him in the pool with an ex-girl friend. An air pursuit results in the crash of the helicopter. Dave Thomas also appears as Cleese's humorless attorney. Summary written by John Sacksteder {jsackste@bellsouth.net} Donald Sinclair (John Cleese) owns the biggest, snazziest, flashiest, high rolling-est casino in Las Vegas. And to entertain some of his wealthiest patrons, he's staged the most original high stakes game that Sin City has ever seen! The contestants? Six teams. The jackpot? Two million dollars stuffed in a locker hundreds of miles away. The odds of winning? One in six. The rules? Well there's only one--get there first! What the racers don't know is that the tycoon and his rich buddies are betting on the outcome and are tracking every move the teams make. It's only a matter of time before they figure out who really stands to win the most before switching course to look for a different kind of pay-off. Summary written by Sujit R. Varma {sujit_varma@hotmail.com} A betting-obsessed casino mogul and his group of just as bad billionaire associates, sets up a new kind of gamble in a race for $2 million hidden away in a locker. They enlist the aid of eight people who happen to be residing in his casino at once. A clean cut lawyer, a disgraced NFL referee, two inept brothers, a determined mother and daughter, a narcoleptic Italian immigrant, and a desperate father embark on a series of misadventures to obtain the money regardless of what it takes.

release year: 2001

star(s): Rowan Atkinson    Whoopi Goldberg