My surprise of 2007 may already be all used up. Yup, I actually enjoyed Wild Hogs. Yeah, it’s cliche, you know everything that is going to happen and yet there were enough good punch lines and memorable characters that none of that mattered. I even laughed when John Travolta got a crow in the face while riding down the highway. Maybe I was due for a laugh, but I enjoyed it.
Wild Hogs tells the story of four middle-aged men all suffering from a mid-life crisis. One is getting divorced (John Travolta), another (Martin Lawrence) is being bossed around at home, another (Tim Allen) needs to find the wild side he once had and the last (William H. Macy) is a computer geek and just likes the thought of a trip on the open road. This group goes on a cross-country road trip and on the way, aside from the typical craziness that occurs, they have a run-in with a group of bad-ass bikers and are forced to hide-out in small local town where they find love, their balls and the adventure they were looking for.
To go too deep into this movie would be silly. It’s a comedy people, and since it is funny that is all you need to know to go see it. The largest positive is certainly the PG-13 rating as this film probably crosses the line one too many times to be considered strictly a family film and is probably just an F-word away from an R. Or, in Marisa Tomei’s case, it is a button away from happy hats and a lot of fun – those puppies are hard to ignore.
Travolta is funny, Allen is funny, Lawrence is funny and Macy serves as the cliched clown of the bunch that crashes into signs, gets an Apple tattoo on his arm and gets the girl that he would never get in the end. Featuring co-stars and cameo appearances from the likes of Ray Liotta, M.C. Gainey, John C. McGinley, Kyle Gass, Dr. Drew, “Orange County Chopper” stars Paul Teutul, Sr. and Paul Teutul, Jr. this film packs it in and survives.
