Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
3/13/07
Escapism gets a bad wrap.
Whatever else you might have heard, taking people away from their troubles
for two hours is one of the primary purposes of the movies. Case
in point: about a month ago, I turned 35, an age that has me thinking
a lot of that Franz Ferdinand lyric, “What might be is now what might have
been”. It was in this state of mind that I viewed Walt Becker's Wild
Hogs, a middle-aged wish fulfillment comedy in which four guys confront
their own midlife crises with a road trip that becomes a life-changing
adventure. In between laughing a lot, the movie just made me feel
better. Is there really any higher praise?
Four friends burn off steam
with a little motorcycle club they call the Wild Hogs. Doug Madsen
(Tim Allen) is a stressed-out dentist. Woody Stevens (John Travolta)
was married to a supermodel, but in the wake of their divorce, he's lost
all his money. Bobby Davis (Martin Lawrence) is a plummer under the
thumb of his overbearing wife (Tichina Arnold). And Dudley Frank
(William H. Macy) is a geeky computer programmer who can't get a date.
Facing eviction, Woody talks the gang into hitting the road for a drive
to the Pacific Ocean. Fate takes them to a real biker bar, where
scary Jack (Ray Liotta) takes Dudley's bike. Woody gets it back,
but not before he's accidentally blown up their bar. With Jack's
gang in hot pursuit, the Hogs end up in a small town that's been terrorized
by the very same bikers. Can four middle-aged nobodies save the town...
and their own skins?
Like the rambling cross-country
trip Woody imagines, Wild Hogs takes its' sweet time enjoying assorted
misadventures before getting down to business. Because Becker has
assembled a first-rate cast, it's fun to just spend time with these stressed-out
poseurs as their own determination to have fun leads to one calamity after
another. Once the real plot kicks in, Liotta does an awesome job
setting scary stakes: the Del Fuegos gang is substantially more dangerous
than the kiddie-movie buffoons you might expect, although the movie never
makes them so nasty as to ruin the fun. A defenseless town liberally
sprinkled with reliable character actors (Maria Tomei and Steven Tobolowsky
leading the way) also helps to keep rooting interest high.
Brad Copeland's laugh-filled
script has fun with the awkwardness of male bonding and squeezes an awful
lot of incident into just under 100 minutes. Like most modern comedies,
the story does feel the need to end over and over again, but most of the
items at this climax buffet were entertaining on their own, so I didn't
hold it against the movie too much. Spirits are high enough that
even an Extreme Makeover: Home Edition sketch over the end
credits made me laugh.
The Hogs themselves are good
across the board: the wonderfully manic Travolta and delightfully
goofy Macy are such charismatic forces of nature that they rarely get to
show off their comic talents as well as they do here. It's particularly
fun the way Travolta echoes past tough guy performances while making it
clear that Woody is in no way capable of backing up his squint, and his
slow meltdown as he waits for what he's done to the bikers to catch up
to him is hilarious. Middle-aged depression is Allen's best note,
and it's fun to watch the usually tough-talking Lawrence play henpecked.
The closer your situation
is to that of the characters, the more likely you are to fall in love with
Wild
Hogs the way I did. But this funny, sentimental, and even occasionally
romantic story should entertain just about everyone looking to get away,
be it on the back of a motorcycle or in the cushy seats of a theater near
you. |
