Wild Hogs DVD Review

View our special Wild Hogs feature!

"Wild Hogs" reviews

DVD

Wild Hogs

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-08-24 14:50:16

Provider

DVD Review

There have been some good mid life crisis movies. City Slickers and Sideways to name but two. Wild Hogs is not another.

It centres on four middle-aged men, all with something to prove, either to themselves or their family. They don their leathers and dispose of their mobiles, resolving to head west from Cincinnati to the Pacific. Led by Woody (John Travolta), an outwardly successful businessman actually on the verge of bankruptcy and an expensive divorce. His biker gang features Doug (Tim Allen), a dentist who's the absolute epitome of suburban conformism; Dudley (William H Macy), a nervous computer geek, who can barely manage his laptop. let alone his motorbike and Bobby (Martin Lawrence), a plumber who spends his life apologising to his domineering wife.

There are several gay jokes, probably to make it clear that this is not a biker Brokeback Mountain and a rather lame sub-plot in which Ray Liotta's real biker gang (what happened to all that post-Goodfellas promise eh?) menace a small town, whose star attraction is diner owner Marisa Tomei. So the city slickers become a four-man Magnificent Seven, or rather a four man, less funny, three amigos, helping the incompetent local sheriff (Stephen Tobolowsky) locate his spine and going back to their lives as more rounded, better men.

But what about the viewers?