The film Text copyright (c) Filmverdict 2006-present. Any film titles and artwork used are copyright of their respective owners.
John Travolta has a lot to thank Quentin Tarantino for. Before Pulp Fiction he had faded into obscurity, but in the thirteen years since then he has been riding the wave of its success, still churning out fairly high-profile movies despite making some godawful dreck like Battlefield Earth. To be fair, he has made some decent movies in that time too, including Get Shorty and Primary Colors, and he actually has some fun moments in Wild Hogs. The top-billed Tim Allen plays "generic middle-aged suburban guy" and Martin Lawrence plays, well, Martin Lawrence. Predictably the best of the bunch is the dependable William H. Macy, who creates a likeable character and lends the movie some of its funniest slapstick stunts. Unfortunately, laughs are quite few and far between, not helped by a musical score that seems to telegraph where the audience should be laughing (just like canned laughter on an unfunny sitcom, it doesn't work). The soundtrack's song selection is pretty decent, but it just takes a load of cliché motorcycle movie songs and re-uses them, although "Born to Be Wild" was notable by its absence.
The first half of the film deals with introducing the characters and setting off on the road trip across the southern States, which at least allows for some good shots of the scenery, such as the Grand Canyon. Scrubs' John C. McGinley makes a typically amusing cameo as pretty much a gay version of Dr. Cox to liven up proceedings a little. The main chunk of the plot occurs once the self-branded Wild Hogs meet the Del Fuegos, a stereotypical no-good biker gang, led by Ray Liotta in standard psychotic maniac mode. A fairly innocent exchange – Macy's character Dudley inadvertently swaps his bike for a heap of junk – leads to Travolta slashing the fuel pipes on the Del Fuegos' rides and consequently blowing up their bar. The sight of the mushroom cloud in Travolta's rear view mirror is one of the film's funniest images (and his subsequent fear of reprisal makes the character more entertaining), but it does seem that the 'villains' of the piece have a pretty understandable grievance. Just to make sure we side with the good guys, director Walt Becker has an over-the-top beat-down take place, in which the violence comes across as strangely repetitive and over-extended, presumably for added comic effect. Clearly, then, Wild Hogs is completely predictable fare and just feels like a product rather than something that any care has been taken with. It could succinctly be described as a "nothing" film: it's not bad enough to be offensive, but it's not good enough to be worthwhile; it just sits there, existing for no reason other than to make money. Which, inexplicably, it has proved very good at.
The summary
Wild Hogs turns out to be exactly what you would expect, and it is occasionally amusing. It's just completely uninspired and unimaginative.
