A gaggle of stars are in this motorcycle comedy that comes with an empty comic gas tank. With the names involved you’d expect it to be funnier but it ends up being a flat tire in my opinion.
Woody (John Travolta), Doug (Tim Allen), Bobby (Martin Lawrence), and Dudley (William H. Macy) are all middle age men who are having a mid-life crisis. Woody is seemingly the most successful with a supermodel wife and rich clientele, Doug is a successful dentist, Bobby is the henpecked husband, and Dudley is the clumsy computer programmer.
They all feel that something is lacking in their lives. It all comes to a head when Woody loses his wife and clients and decides to go on a cross-country motorcycle trip to have some adventure in this flailing life. He takes his buddies along for the ride so that they too can reconnect with their youth. Along the way they encounter the El Fuego biker gang (led by Ray Liotta), a randy cop (John C. McGinley), and Dudley even finds love in a small town with a waitress (Marisa Tomei).
There’s a problem that I had with the film – it wasn’t very funny. Every comedy has to have a level of believability to it. Four men having a mid-life crisis and setting out on a cross-country trip sounds like it has potential. However, all the main characters involved are so over the top that it’s really painful to watch. They saddle Macy’s character with such clumsiness that it’s painful to watch.
He’s supposedly a computer programmer but in one scene when he accidentally pulls up a granny porn website in a coffeehouse instead of putting the laptop’s lid down to stop the octogenarian orgy he decides to take it apart. Such leaps only made me roll my eyes not burst into fits of laughter. I also wondered if some of the actors realized they were in a dog and decided to go over the top in the extreme – Travolta is a big offender in this department.
Not to mention that when the boys stop at a roadside attraction or the small town of Madrid that they look so much like sets that it pulled me completely out of the film. There were a few snickers to be found, but I was expecting a great deal more with the comedians involved.
Wild Hogs is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include a commentary by director Walt Becker and writer Brad Copeland. The 16 minute “Bikes, Bars, and Burning Bars: The Making of Wild Hogs” interviews director Becker, William H. Macy, John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, stunt coordinator Jack Gill, and screenwriter Copeland. They definitely thought the film was funnier than I did.
The 2 minutes “How to Get Your Wife to Let You Buy a Motorcycle” has Gill giving some tips on how to let the old lady convinced that you need a bike. There’s also a 1-minute alternate ending that has McGinley’s character showing up again and 2 minutes of some inconsequential deleted scenes. There’s an optional commentary on these by Becker and Copeland. Finally there are 2 minutes of outtakes.
Wild Hogs struck me as incredibly unfunny, but others might not find it so. I expected a lot more from the stars involved and was rewarded with a tepid “coming of old age” comedy.
Wild Hogs is now available at Amazon . It is available for pre-order at AmazonUK for an August 27th release. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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