Movie Review: "Wild Hogs"
Category: Movies...
Posted Monday, March 05, 2007 at 03:49 PM [GMT-6]

Note: There are no spoilers in the first part of this review, but they abound in the second part. Watch for the warning if you care about such things.

I see that Wild Hogs provided Disney with its best March opening on record -- proving among other things that baseball statisticians have nothing on their Hollywood counterparts in their penchant for tracking trivia -- and I confess that I and MLB contributed to that accomplishment.

Let me say right off the bat that if you're a parent of one or more teens, do not take them with you to see this movie. It's not that I worry about your exposing them to inappropriate content, but I do fear for what little credibility you undoubtedly have left at this point in your life when they see you laughing out loud at the endless parade of junior high-level (and sometimes that's a stretch) humor that makes up the substance of this film.

I'm sure someone has computed the collective box office generated by the movies in which the amazing ensemble cast has appeared over the past few decades, and it surely runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions (DVD sales of My Cousin Vinny alone might account for that bump). It would be hard to imagine a more likable cast than one comprised of Travolta, Allen, Macy, Lawrence, Liotta, Tomei, and -- oops, I almost gave something away; see Spoiler section below. They obviously had fun making the movie, and the sheer forces of their personalities creates an irresistible draw for the audience. Nevertheless, I didn't get an overwhelming sense of chemistry as in, say, Ocean's Eleven, nor did the movie come off as anything but a series of gags loosely stitched together by the lamest of plots: four middle-aged guys set out on Harleys to recapture the imagined freedom of their youth (or to escape the real frustrations of their, um, middle-agedness).

But, hey...it's entertainment, not brain surgery, and if you laughed at Travolta getting smacked in the face by a crow as shown in the ubiquitous trailers, you'll find plenty of other things to laugh at in the movie, and that's not all bad. Just don't admit to your kids that you went.

Spoilers ensue...

Some random observations:

• One of the funniest parts of the movie came during the closing credits, where a take-off on ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" was shown, with the makeover project being the biker bar that Travolta's character inadvertently blew up during the movie. It was complete with an annoying Ty Pennington, a crowd yelling "Bus driver, move that bus!" and appropriate emotional reactions from the tough biker dudes.


• The climactic plot-resolving twist occurred with the appearance of Peter Fonda in full Easy Rider get-up, wherein he reveals that he's still king of the highway. This was accompanied by the movie's low point -- for me -- as the young lady sitting to my left whispered to her companion, "who's that?". The youth of America have lost their cultural heritage, and it's a sad, sad thing.


• I can vouch for the movie's realism in one respect: riding a motorcycle at highway speeds without a face shield is no fun. You can wax poetic all you want about the wind in your hair, but the bugs in your teeth provide a counterpoint that can't be denied.


• The cameo appearance of Orange County Choppers' Paul Teutul Sr. was as lame as it gets. I couldn't tell if he was supposed to be gay but acting tough, or tough but acting gay. He wasn't convincing in either case. His son, Mikey, was also in the movie, but I never noticed him.


• You'd have to go back to About Schmidt to find a movie that provides more unfortunate exposure of middle-aged flesh than does this one. William H. Macy seems awfully proud of his rear-end, and for no good reason. [Didn't he display the same proclivity in The Cooler?]