Wild Hogs

John Travolta
Tim Allen
William H. Macy
Martin Lawrence
John C McGinley

Directed by: Walt Becker

Road trip films aren’t exactly an obscure genre of film. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby made a film career out of them, they have been used to define a generation in films like Easy Rider, and sometimes they are just memorable films like the Kevin Costner film Fandango or the Billy Crystal film City Slickers. Wild Hogs is the story of a group of friends tied together in a small town by their love of motorcycles and the patch of a pig on their leather jackets. Each has their own version of middle age problems, a dead end marriage, financial problems, and even the man who has yet to “live life”. They decide to head west on their motorcycles and explore the open road. Hopefully, they will be able to clear their heads and get a fresh perspective on their lives. On the road out west they run into a group of real bikers and later a town being terrorized by the same gang. The friends decide to face the biker gang and in the process help to save the town.

With an eclectic cast, Wild Hogs could have separated itself a little from a lot of the (frankly much better) road/biker/self discovery films to come before them. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to care that nothing about this film seems different or fresh. Even the details seem to be pulled directly from other films, fables, and famous short stories. The only purpose for the eclectic cast in this film seems to be to draw in as many fans of the actors as possible; story, comedy, and the thought of putting together a relatively enjoyable film be damned.

Or maybe the producers hoped to distract people just enough so that they would forget about Blockbuster Video or Netflix, both cheaper alternatives. There is something to that though (not the Blockbuster thing of course). There are a lot of films that are produced just for the benefit of having a big name or two above the title. Some are successful and some are actually very good films. Wild Hogs doesn’t even work as a vehicle for all of the big name actors in the film. There are just too many cooks working from an incredibly bad recipe.

With all of these problems, I think the worst thing you can actually say about a comedy is that it just wasn’t funny. The film is filled with bad, rehashed jokes, too many awkward moments of silence, and too many actors trying way too hard to be comfortable, which ultimately only seems to punctuate all of the problems with this movie. There is really no reason to see this film.
 

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