I'm a little surprised that this film is described here as a 'tender romantic comedy'. I remember it as anything but. Yes, there's a romance, but much of it is an acerbic take on the hard underbelly of New York, as indeed you'd expect with a screenplay by Garson Kanin. The scene where Curtis is robbed of his instruments by a phony jazz group, then tries to pick them up from the Police storeroom only to get involved in a convoluted argument with a recalcitrant officer, is one of the most cynical takes on big city life that I can remember. Add that to the scene where Don Rickles forces Debbie Reynolds to strip to her underwear because she can't pay a debt, then says to her, "Now...do you get the point!" and you've got anything but a tender romantic comedy.
I don't know, maybe I saw a different Rat Race to everyone else's. But I should mention that the one I saw had a very good dramatic score by Elmer Bernstein, so maybe Elmer and I both got it wrong.
Review of The Rat Race
