Wild Hogs Review

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"Wild Hogs" reviews

Movie

Wild Hogs

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-04-05 22:25:43

Rating

2/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

Wild Hogs is basically City Slickers meets Easy Rider--just a whole lot sillier without any sociological angst.

Story

The movie tagline sort of sums it up: ''Four guys from the suburbs hit the road...and the road hits back.'' The four middle-aged friends, who like to jump on their motorcylces and go riding around once a week, are: Doug (Tim Allen), a dentist embarrassed by his job; Bobby (Martin Lawrence), a henpecked husband who wants to break away from being a plumber; Dudley (William H. Macy), a mild-mannered computer programmer and resident geek; and finally, Woody (John Travolta), an entrepreneur with seemingly the most going for him. In actuality, Woody is about to hit rock bottom but rather than be honest with his friends, he convinces them all to hit the open road with him--to feel the wind in their hair, so to speak. And as they go looking for adventure, they soon find that they've embarked on a journey they will never forget. Uh-huh.

Acting

Who would have thought these four actors would make a movie together? Casting Wild Hogs looked like the best part about making the movie, as the producers probably sat around, coming up with different variations (wonder who else they considered--Tom Hanks? Steve Carell?) Comedy veterans Allen and Lawrence have fun riffing on one another, doing their shtick here and there, while Travolta (the only real biker of the bunch) and Macy easily keep up with the antics. For the most part, these guys click, but I'm sure everyone did this purely for the money—and the Harleys. Ray Liotta gets to play the menacing villain once again as the leader of a motorcycle gang who has it out for our hapless quartet. Of course, this time Liotta plays it for laughs and does a nice job with it. Even Marisa Tomei makes an appearance as a small town denizen who falls for Macy's Dudley, as the boys end up defending the town from Liotta and his thugs, Magnificent Seven-style.

Direction

You can see every plot point coming a mile away, plus a few director Walt Becker probably didn't even know were in there. But honestly, from the guy who directed Van Wilder, what did you expect? Becker is handy with a camera and totally knows where the film's bread is buttered, focusing all his energy and attention on his four stars. Unfortunately, in doing so, Wild Hogs mostly misses out on the poignancy of, say, a City Slickers, even though it tries real hard to get us to connect with these middle-aged men trying to recapture youth--or whatever. But listen, this isn't supposed to change the world; Wild Hogs is just pure, dumb fun about a group of guys wearing leather and riding hogs. Period.

Bottom Line

Hollywood.com rated this film 2 stars.

Movie

Wild Hogs

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-04-06 16:01:59

Provider

Review

This surprise comedy hit takes the premise of Billy Crystal's City Slickers off horseback and out of the desert and sticks it on Harley Davidsons out on the open road.

Four middle-aged men, all with something to prove, either to themselves or their family, 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, this unlikely 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.

They may look like the Village People with a job lot of the same costume, but Wild Hogs loses no opportunity to underline the heterosexuality of its stars. At times it feels like one long extension of the joke in Planes, Trains And Automobiles, when Steve Martin and John Candy wake up with their hands somewhere they shouldn't have been and immediately dust themselves down with a conversation about baseball. Once the film has exhausted its supply of gay jokes, we get a feeble sub-plot in which Ray Liotta's real biker gang menace a small town, whose star attraction is diner owner Marisa Tomei. So the city slickers become a four-man Magnificent Seven, helping the incompetent local sheriff (Stephen Tobolowsky) locate his spine and going back to their lives as more rounded, better men. The punter can only marvel at the fact that someone got something from the whole dismal experience.