It all seems so sadly ironic that a biker-buddies/road trip comedy featuring John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and Tim Allen gives the impression that they're running on empty. And yet, it was a thought I couldn't shake off after an advance screening of their new movie, "Wild Hogs," which is further proof that these actors need a serious refueling in their waning careers.
Over ten years after his meaty, memorable leading role in "Pulp Fiction," Travolta has settled into a mediocre streak more painful to witness than the one between 1981's underrated "Blow Out" and 1989's sleeper hit "Look Who's Talking." To list the lesser movies he had made between 1995 and 2006 would complete this paragraph for me. Lawrence's track record got stuck in the mud somewhere around "Black Knight," and it seems to still be trapped (thankfully, unlike one of his A-list doppelgangers, he has avoided any earth-shaking miscalculations on the level of "Pluto Nash" or "Norbit"). And I just simply gave up on Allen after "Christmas with the Kranks," and refused to look back at the wreckage despite the temptation.
Glory days may come and go, but "Wild Hogs" threatens to waste all the goodwill these men have built up. It's a movie about that should've existed eleven years ago, at the time when all three of them were in their prime and undoubtedly could've made something out of nothing. But had this been so, I'm pretty sure that their co-star, William H. Macy, would've left the script in the barrel from whence it came. Instead, it's 2007, and "Wild Hogs" comes off as a slack, only sporadically amusing attempt at a joyride. Not only that, it's a movie it feels like you are all too familiar with.
The "Wild Hogs" are a quartet of middle-aged Cincinnati suburbanites who ride to forget their mechanical little lives. The script introduces each of them in an equally routine manner. Woody, who is the agent/husband of a supermodel trophy wife whom we never see, finds himself bankrupt and unable to even bankroll the boy who rakes the front lawn of his posh home. Dudley (Macy) is a hapless computer programmer who gets his voice-activated laptop stuck on porn sites in a joke not too far removed from one in the dreadful Diane Keaton vehicle "Because I Said So." Bobby (Lawrence) is a pushover in a dysfunctional family who hopes to become an author, but his shrill wife pushes him back into a plumbing job that finds him treading **** literally, as well. And Doug (Allen) is your typical dentist with a loving wife yet who cannot relate to his preteen son thanks to how unexcited ordinary his life is.
Woody, who boasts the biggest case of arrested development, persuades his friends to go on a cross-country trip in order to get back in touch with their manliness. If you cannot guess where the road leads from hereon out, chances are your memory doesn't stretch as far back as "RV" or "Without a Paddle," whose pandering, post-"Deliverance" veneer of homophobic humor is revisited in a scene where the four men are forced to sleep together after their tent accidentally burns down. When I first saw the film's trailer, I foresaw the comically-gifted John C. McGinley, the resident ball-buster from TV's "Scrubs," stealing the movie from these A-list actors, and, in a way, he does. Sadly, since he has had a resurgence of his own, he's relegated to a terribly brief recurring role as a closet case park ranger.
The four Sputtering Stanleys encounter adversaries in the Del Fuegos, a hardcore biker gang led by a one-dimensionally menacing Ray Liotta, deprived of the wit in his turns in either "Something Wild" or "Heartbreakers(!)" Woody blows up their bar in an attempt at vengeance, and lies to his friends as they find refuge in the New Mexican town of Madrid. There Doug finds confidence slapping a bull's tushie, Bobby wows the inept redneck law force and Dudley at last finds romance in a pretty diner owner played by Marisa Tomei. Tomei, you may recall, back when mainstream comedies were legitimately given Oscar consideration, won Best Supporting Actress for her sparkling, star-making turn in "My Cousin Vinny." I only bring this up because the lady's talent is hitched to a charming yet underwritten stock character that shows that they sure don't make 'em like they used to.
Despite the considerable acting pedigree I have mentioned, the movie is so frustratingly pedestrian that a yellow sign should be placed by the auditorium door as a warning. Walt Becker (National Lampoon's Van Wilder) directs this with sitcom precision, although he thankfully restrains at least showing us the poop in his scatological humor and is aware of comic timing and the use of the rule of threes. And Brad Copeland, a scribe for episodes of "Arrested Development" and "My Name Is Earl," wrote his feature debut with a complete disregard for what makes those aforementioned TV shows so irreverent and entertaining. Pandering is the oft-used description of what most inexperienced film authors do to assure an audience, but Becker and Copeland pay no mind, resulting in a film that suffers from the same sort of hack-job indifference that I'm pretty sure all of these actors have been through before.
Travolta has come a long way from the comic chops he has shown in the original "Look Who's Talking" and "Get Shorty." He seems the most desperate out of all four leading actors to deliver the funny, perpetually mugging and stringing his dialogue together in a way that only a man like, say, Vince Vaughn can get away with. Lawrence and Allen are far more laid-back and natural, and manage to deliver a few surprising laughs that even I, who feared the worst from both of them, succumbed to. Maybe it's just the script that's let them down. As for the most dignified actor of the pack, Macy reconfigures his immortal schlub persona into a sort of audience-friendly Everynerd guise (think of Rick Moranis), easily portraying the most sympathetic and charming of the Hogs. Aside from Liotta, Tomei and McGinley, the supporting cast also includes Stephen Tobolowsky as the sheriff of Madrid, Tenacious D's Kyle Gass as a bumpkin karaoke singer who does a mean Ginuwine, and a surprise end appearance by one of the original Easy Riders, Peter Fonda.
In short: "Wild Hogs" is a mostly smooth ride down 100 minutes of rough road. It won't likely make me want to run out and see anything else Travolta, Lawrence or Allen make in the future, but it's breezy, crowd-pleasing and happily forgettable.
Two out of five pitchforks.
Wild Hogs opens in theaters March 2, 2007.
