Review of Wild Hogs (2007) by Markb. — 16 Apr 2007

There are definite reasons why this is, as of now, the #2 box office hit of 2007...even though this admittedly derivative slapstick farce about four middle-agers attempting to recapture their youth, resolve their issues and regain their wildness by going on a cross-country motorcycle odyssey should theoretically have crashed and burned.

John Travolta's career has had more ups and downs than a ferris wheel; leaving his universally reviled labor of love Battlefield Earth on the table, the man has taken so many promiscuously chosen projects (The General's Daughter? Domestic Disturbance? Lucky Numbers?) that his agency should be regularly checked for STDs.

Buzz Lightyear aside, Tim Allen is a poor man's Ray Romano whose film career (except for Galaxy Quest, Big Trouble and--if you're 10 or under--the Santa Clause movies) is an adventure in viewer sadomasochism, and Martin Lawrence, whose TV sitcom ran about as long as Allen's and was equally mediocre, may be so crazy, but he ain't so funny.

Even the movie's "class" element, the great William H. Macy, had me initially wondering if he took on this project in an attempt to regain his household breadwinner status and match Felicity Huffman's Desperate Housewives paychecks.

Worst of all, director Walt Becker is responsible for National Lampoon's Van Wilder, one of the cruddiest comedies of the last 25 years and one possessing exactly one good gag (a snobbish bad guy college student is slipped an Ex-Lax Mickey Finn and rushes through a crucial multiple choice exam, rapidly checking off nothing but letter "C" answers before rushing off to blessed men's room release.

You're welcome.) All this should potentially make Wild Hogs one of this year's top Musts to Avoid, but there's one mitigating factor: it's funny. (And charming. And even, at times, surprisingly insightful.

) The four guys have some delightful moments both together and separately, with Lawrence's "condiment showdown" scene his finest moment ever and Macy, as the one single guy in the group, approaching this with as much skill and commitment as he does anything written by David Mamet; he's so likable here that the final pre-credits gag is unusually satisfying.

(And, interestingly, Macy is the only one of the four who's comfortable with onscreen nudity, even when the script calls for it.) But what really makes the hogs hum is the supporting cast: Ray Liotta, in full Something Wild loose-cannon mode, is hilariously unhinged as a "real" biker perpetually infuriated by the "posers"; Marisa Tomei, whom I've often found a little too self-consciously cute in some of her past performances, strikes the perfect note as a restaurant owner and possible romantic interest for Macy; the offbeat casting of character actors John C.

McGinley (TV's Scrubs) and Stephen Tobolowsky (a specialist in playing slimy bureaucratic weasels) as two very different small town cops, yields wonderful comic dividends. I won't deny that Wild Hogs' premise rips off that of City Slickers (albeit with only a third of the soulful navel-gazing and three times the belly laughs), but Becker's ability to stage and sell a gag has improved 1000%--it would almost have to!--and the result is a deserving crowd-pleaser that pleasantly recalls the days when Touchstone Pictures routinely released at least one solid, entertaining audience movie (Splash, Ruthless People, Pretty Woman, etc.

) a month. Despite several critics' fevered attempts to convince you otherwise (shouldn't Macy's work alone have been enough to inch this movie into the yellow regions? A score of 27 is a clear case of overkill!) its box-office success, like that of Stir Crazy, the original Porky's and many other "crowd comedies" of years past, is proof of absolutely nothing more ominous than millions of moviegoers' perfectly understandable desire to settle down after a long hard week with a fun, feel-good movie.