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Wild Hogs (2007)

Director: Walt Becker

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From Time Out London

How this low-brow road-trip comedy managed to reap $40 million in its first three days is a mystery. It’s also difficult to tell at whom the film is actually aimed. The premise is clearly one for blokes on the wrong side of 40, yet the pratfalls coupled with Walt Becker’s slip-shod direction suggest a target audience of youngsters. It is a Disney flick, after all. And yet… and yet there are scenes here so uncomfortably innuendo-esque that you wander what possessed the BBFC to give it a 12A certificate.

‘Wild Hogs’ is a ‘City Slickers’-style tale of four middle-aged men with a penchant for motorcycling, US style. Each has a Harley Davidson, and they meet up every week for no particular reason other than to enjoy a blast to the local biker’s hangout. Crucially, all four are going through mid-life crises: John Travolta is a wealthy businessman with a depleted bank account; Tim Allen’s a jaded dentist with high cholesterol; Martin Lawrence is a hen-pecked plumber; and William H Macy is a bespectacled compu-nerd. Bored with their humdrum existence, they decide to chuck away their mobile phones and head off on a cross-country bonding ride which culminates in an embarrassingly homophobic altercation with an appallingly portrayed ‘predatory’ gay cop and a ‘Magnificent Seven’-inspired showdown with Ray Liotta’s clichéd biker gang. In fact, the film is one big cliché, from the 1970s biker soundtrack to the cornball townsfolk they inadvertently rescue. Petrol-headed fifty-somethings into Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers will probably relate to some of the funnier scenes. The rest, including pre-teens, are advised to avoid it like el plago.

Author: Derek Adams 2007-04-10 11:30:18

Time Out London Issue 1912: April 11-17 2007