But Rat Race isn’t a parody: it’s a movie in a classic mould. With it, Zucker is revitalising a formula which preceded disaster movies by a decade or so. The film, which he shot in Alberta and Nevada last autumn, is a new twist on the chase movie, as epitomised by the 1963 classic It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. In that most untypical of the late Stanley Kramer’s movies, an all-star cast incorporating everyone from Spencer Tracy to Buster Keaton headed off in search of buried treasure, causing every kind of comic mayhem along the way.

Who loves you, baby? Cuba Gooding Jr with the Lucy lookalikes.

A mixture of slapstick farce and demolition derby, it was not an easy trick to pull off, as witness the increasingly tired series of sequels which followed Mad Mad World. But, if anyone can bring it back to life, Zucker can. Indeed, to judge by the handful of scenes which had been edited together by time of writing, Zucker has tapped right into the combination of escalating slapstick and surreal humour which is what comedy chase movies are all about.

Jon Lovitz

One scene, for instance, involving Seth Green (Dr Evil’s son, Scott, from the Austin Powers movies), a jeep, a tow-rope and a revolving radar dish on top of a tower at the end of an airport runway, belongs right in the mainstream of cinematic slapstick: about half-way through, you see what’s going to happen; it happens; then every possible riff is played on it to escalating comic effect.

The story is a familiar one: an eccentric millionaire - played by John Cleese, sporting the whitest, most perfect teeth you’ve ever seen - lures a motley crew of Vegas vacationers into a race to find $2 million left in a railway station locker in Silver City, New Mexico. They’re all given keys, and the first one to get to Silver City gets the loot. That’s about it as far as the racers are concerned.

Lanai Chapman and Whoopi Goldberg

But there’s a twist: as Cleese tells the hapless (and initially incredulous) racers about the plan, a group of high-rollers is watching on closed-circuit cameras. The ‘rat race’, it turns out, is a set-up. This is Las Vegas, where the greed which drives modern society is shown without its usual mask of business plans, stock exchange dealings and the like. The racers are there because they have been playing the slots and have come up with a special gold token which gets them an invite up to casino owner Donald St Claire’s penthouse. But the real gamblers are the ones behind the mirror, betting on which of the racers will get there first. And, in this other game, the stakes are a lot higher than $2 million.