The Middle Ages

Doris (Shirley MacLaine): Dear, I’m middle-aged.
Suzanne (Meryl Streep): Really. And how many one hundred and twenty-year-old women do you know?—1990 Postcards From The Edge

The problem with living and working in and around Hollywood is that, collectively, virtually everyone you know has, at one time or another, seen every movie every made. Worse yet, they’ve committed every good quip and one-liner to memory.

That’s why whenever I refer to myself as middle-aged, I’m inevitably hit with some variation of Carrie Fisher’s snappy comeback from her novel turned screenplay Postcards From the Edge.

Really? And how many one hundred and fourteen-year-old web journalists do you know?

I mention this only because I found myself asking the same snarky question every time I heard John Travolta (53), Tim Allen (54), and William H. Macy (57) referring to themselves, or being referred to, as middle-aged in Wild Hogs, now available on DVD from Touchstone Home Entertainment. Not because these guys don’t take care of themselves and look much younger than their actual ages. No, it’s just that Wild Hogs had enough lapses in narrative to allow my mind to wander while the film rolled on.

In case you’re wondering, Martin Lawrence, the fourth Wild Hog, is middle-aged and the baby of the bunch at 42.

Wild Hogs is the story of four childhood friends, now middle-aged (there’s that phrase again) and middle-class, from Cincinnati who have all reached that classic TV sitcom point in their lives where they share a feeling of being stuck in a seemingly meaningless and endless rut.

Doug (Tim Allen), a dentist with a beautiful wife (Jill Hennessy), equally beautiful home, and prerequisite distant thirteen-year-old son longs to have achieved more and, to that end, constantly introduces himself as a doctor.

Woody (John Travolta), the group’s de facto leader, seems to have it made: swimsuit-model wife, luxurious estate, and a big business career, and equally big secret problems.

Bobby (Martin Lawrence) dreams of being a writer, but after a year away from his job as a plumber, he’s failed to complete his first book—and his demanding wife orders him back into the trenches.

And finally, Dudley (William H. Macy), a life-long bachelor and computer geek so socially inept that he can’t even mange a cup of coffee at the local coffee house without setting his laptop on fire. He’s also the group’s worst biker and, by rights, should have thinned himself from the heard a decade or two ago. Instead, Dudley establishes Wild Hogs’ bona fides as a slapstick comedy, by getting himself up off the pavement and dusting himself off after more bone crushing spills and falls than a ballet company on an oil slick.

Screenwriter Brad Copeland, whose credits include producing and writing well-received television comedies Arrested Development and My Name Is Earl, conceived these characters after coming to the conclusion that one can still have a mind-blowing, perspective-altering adventure—even in the middle of middle-class suburbia!

To that end, after establishing that his four heroes are bored to tears with suburbia, Copeland quickly dispatches his protagonists to the open road. There, on the highways and by-ways of America’s heartlands, hilarity ensues as these fish-out-of-water find themselves in one comedic predicament after another. Or, at least, that’s what’s supposed to happen.

Depends

Wild Hogs relies heavily on potty humor, or the lack thereof, in the wide-open spaces. While probably accurate, we’re repeatedly treated to scenes of the funny and unexpected consequences that can arrive after a man reaches that stage of life where his bladder and prostate are basically at war with one another.

While many of the jokes are lame and can be seen coming a mile away, one recurring gag proves what even predictable humor can be like when played to the hilt by an actor with impeccable timing and great skill.

After Doug sets their tent and sleeping bags on fire with an overly roasted marshmallow, which appears out of nowhere, and Dudley finishes the job off by trying to douse the flames with lantern fuel, the “boys” are forced to spend their first night on the road huddled together on Bobby’s air mattress, which escaped the conflagration because Bobby’s “cheap-ass wife” wouldn’t let him buy a foot pump, thereby forcing him to blow it up the old fashioned way as they sat around the campfire.

The following morning, the Wild Hogs awaken to find themselves being closely scrutinized by a motorcycle riding highway patrolman (John C. McGinley). In a scene reminiscent of some of Copeland’s best work from My Name Is Earl and Arrested Development, McGinley deftly turns his seemingly by-the-book, hard-as-nails patrolman into a lust-struck, macho, gay biker cop on the verge of fulfilling his wildest fantasy.

Left to right, John Travolta, William H. Macy, Tim Allen, and Martin Lawrence in the Touchstone Home Entertainment release of Wild Hogs. Now available on DVD.
Image copyright© Buena Vista Home Entertainment. All rights reserved.

Well-done comedy beats like that make Wild Hogs worth sitting through, literally—don’t hit stop when the credits roll, or you’ll miss one of the funniest bits in the whole film. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough scenes like that in the movie to keep it from drifting into pools of sitcom shtick, the reason for which can be found in the Wild Hogs DVD’s special features.

In the featurette film Bikes, Brawls & Burning Bars: The Making ofWild Hogs that is included on the DVD, director Walt Becker and writer Brad Copeland, perhaps unintentionally, reveal how a comedy based on a relatively simple premise can loose its focus and veer off course.

“Because Tim and Martin are both stand-ups and John and William H. Macy are both great at comedy we’ve been adlibbing and improving at least a few times, every scene,” says Wild Hogs director Becker during an on-set interview.

“I think we kinda threw out the script on week one basically,” Becker admits later in the conversation.

Translation: The actors took over the asylum.

Becker at least gives the impression that this was a positive thing for the film. Copeland, on the other hand, is not nearly as convincing, telling the audience that his work was merely in service of the actors, when he said, “At the end of the day, the script is only the foundation for these guys to build this comedy on.”

He wasn’t anymore convincing when he said, “Anytime you see someone take your script and put this layer of frosting on it, it’s a great moment, ‘cause it’s just like, I didn’t write that. It just came alive.”

Actors and Extras

Ray Liotta who plays Jack, leader of the Del Fuegos biker gang, turns in the most intense performance in Wild Hogs. Jack has issues. He’s angry, very, very angry. As seen in the film’s outtakes, Liotta throws himself so far into the part of Jack, he doesn’t even break character when a shot is goofed up.

In contrast to Liotta’s intensity, M. C. Gainey, known to millions of Lost fans as Mr. Friendly, and Kevin Durand as comedic biker bad guys, like the aforementioned McGinley, turn in great supporting comic performances.

Almost completely overlooked are Jill Hennessey, as Doug’s wife Kelly, and Marisa Tomei, who plays Maggie, Dudley’s love interest. Both actresses are given precious little to say or do. Of the ladies, only Tichina Arnold, playing Bobby’s overbearing wife, gets the chance to break out and generate a few laughs on her own.

Left to right M.C. Gainey, Kevin Durand, and Ray Liotta in the Touchstone Home Entertainment release of
Wild Hogs. Now available on DVD.
Image copyright© Buena Vista Home Entertainment. All rights reserved.

At the box office, Wild Hogs performed better than a lot of people expected. It grossed over $168 million in domestic release, enough to tempt most studio execs to consider making a follow-up feature (as of now no such announcement has been made). All of which goes a long way toward explaining the barebones special features on the Wild Hogs DVD. If a second film is made, the studio in all likelihood will reissue a deluxe version of the DVD, with more features, before the debut of any sequel.

There is the usual, previously mentioned, self-congratulatory “making of” featurette, along with an additional featurette entitled, How to Get Your Wife Let You Buy a Motorcycle, deleted scenes, outtakes, and, for all you American Chopper fans, an Easter Egg.

There is also an alternate ending featuring John C. McGinley’s lusty highway patrolman getting one more chance to, uh, bond with the guys. It’s truly funny; however, the director was right to use the ending he did.

Director Walt Becker and writer Brad Copeland can be heard on the audio commentary. After seeing them struggle to sell Wild Hogs in the “making of featurette,” I decided to skip the commentary. C

Wild Hogs is available now on DVD for $29.99 in the U.S. and $37.99 in Canada, and on Blu-ray Disc for $34.99 in the U.S. and $44.99 in Canada.

Feature run time:  100 Minutes

Rated:    U.S. “PG-13.” Canada “PG.” 

Aspect ratio:   2.35:1

Sound:  Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound

Languages:   French and Spanish language tracks and subtitles.