Techtite's DVD Reviews!

"...it could've been twice the picture it is now. Instead; it's only half of what it could've been."

--from the review

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Wild Hogs

A Review by Techtite

What if you wanted to fight the barrage of "chick flicks" by writing a "men's flick," and your wife wouldn't let you? The answer just may be the behind the scenes story to Wild Hogs, a film that certainly isn't bad by any means, and yet if it had stuck to its "born to be wild" formula, it could've been twice the picture it is now. Instead; it's only half of what it could've been. Once again; audience members are offered a good film idea that could've been great.

The premise is simple, yet that's the trick to good comedy. In the best of comedies, the story never gets in the way of the jokes. In this case, we see four middle aged men trying to rekindle their youth with a cross country road trip, while pretending to be a faux road gang called The Wild Hogs. That's all you need for story. Bring on the funny jokes!

Each man approaches the humor of mid-life crisis from a different angle. Bobby (Martin Lawrence) loves his wife yet to be honest, she's a bit of a shrew, and treats him like a dog (complete with commands like "Come here!" and "Stay!"). Woody (John Travolta) is a rich guy who's just lost his "trophy wife, " though he doesn't want to admit it and risk his friends no longer seeing him as "the cool one" of the group. Dudley (William H. Macy) is a bachelor, though not by choice, and simply needs a lady nice enough to break him out of his nerdy shell. Meanwhile, Doug (Tim Alen) is a happily married man whose biggest flaw is that work has divided him from his family. Each man has their own reason to need a road trip to escape all their woes, though quite obviously, they all need it very much.

While this is a good setup for a comedy, there are some potholes that make it a very rough ride, as it were. For one thing the whole point of an "open road" bike riders' story is: the open road. Yet the story literally has the gang stop for gas at a seedy gang hangout run by a seedy biker gang leader named Jack (Ray Liotta). Once they stop for gas there, the story all but breaks down at a nearby small town, where the not-exactly-bikers The Wild Hogs must offer the town a "deliverance" of sorts from the seedier bikers who bully them. It's a cute story, made even cuter when the nerdy Dudley hits it off with small town waitress, Maggie (Marisa Tomei). However, one can't help but wonder whose idea it was to take a story about the open road and stall it in a sleepy little town for half of the movie.

You can't blame the script for wanting to stall there, however. No offense intended, but this wasn't a movie written by people who knew anything about long road trips. As a result, we don't see many jokes that the road traveller can identify with, and instead see the "Wild Hogs" as they goof up simple bike riding, even simpler camping, and later, totally simple skinny-dipping. Yeah, I know; how can you goof up skinny-dipping? Let's just say they achieve failure beyond their wildest dreams. It doesn't help that during these moments they're pursued by an obvious gay stereotype (played by Scrubs' John C. McGinley) who may very well insult the gay community, and totally annoy everyone else, all at the same time.

Yet the irony of any two and a half out of five star film, is how it is almost literally six of one, half a dozen of the other. Let's cover the "good half" first. For one thing: while the story may not be what it should be, what it is has some good heart to it. The overall message seems to be that even if you don't have the strength to fight a bully, your spirit and courage is what matters. That's a sweet story, made even sweeter by the mini-love-story starring Macey and Tomei, and all the rest of the film's very well chosen cast (including a final cameo that's sure to thrill bike movie fans).

Yet the other half of the movie seems to want to have its cake and eat it too. be struggling to make this "men's day out" flick into a "chick flick" at the same time, and it doesn't pay off. While we're not saying that Bobby should dump his shrew wife, it's not like she shouldn't be told a thing or two about talking to her husband like he was her little puppy dog. I also didn't like the apparent message here: that she had a bigger salary, and he was "just" a plumber, so "obviously," she could talk to him like her inferior. It's not like Bobby should go after her with a Monkey Wrench a la The Three Stooges, yet his cutie attitude to her in the film's last minutes were more annoying and less endearing than the writers apparently thought it was.

In the end...what more can I say? It's made 100+ million at the box office by now, so what matters my opinion? Yet it's curious when you think of what it would've done, had it been twice the film it is, which is to say: the whole film it could've been. You know what I mean...

---Techtite

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