(2007) While not able to match motors or comedy chrome with a monster machine like City Slickers, director Brad Copeland's film occasionally goes hog wild on a rollicking romp. Four middle-aged suburban guys from Cincinnati get on their bikes for a week's fantasy ride to the Pacific Coast.

Feeling old and lame, Doug Madsen (Tim Allen), a dentist with an attractive wife (Jill Hennessy), asks: "What do I gotta do to relate to my son?" Henpecked husband Bobby Davis (Martin Lawrence), after spending a year being unsuccessful at writing a how-to book, returns to his distasteful plumbing job. The geek, Dudley Frank (William H. Macy), a computer programmer, is a bashful bachelor. Mr Cool, Woody Stevens (John Travolta), asks his buddies: "What do we have to look forward to?"

Getting older and dying … so he encourages the others to join him on a road trip to nowhere, without cell phones … free and wild. Unbeknownst to his companions, Woody is running away from a screwed up life, having lost his clients and his job, being broke, and getting divorced by his supermodel wife.

On go the black leather jackets with the "Wild Hogs" patch on the back before they climb onto their bikes, heading west into Missouri (roasting marshmallows they accidentally set their tent on fire) and dropping down into New Mexico, where they stop at a biker bar with real bad bully tattooed bikers - the Del Fuegos.

Bobby asks his Caucasian companions: "Does anybody get that pre-rape feeling?" Jack (Ray Liotta) and his fifty mean mad men take offense with the city poseurs and then trick Dudley out of his Sportster. Dragging their egos behind them as they retire eastward, with Dudley in a sidecar attached to Woody's bike, Woody halts the retreat, returns alone to the bar, retrieves Dudley's bike, and slices all the gas lines on the Del Fuego bikes.

Back on the road for California, the four friends run out of gas in the desert but reach Madrid on a Sunday (gas station closed until Monday) in time to celebrate the chili festival and for Dudley to fall for Maggie (Marisa Tomei), the owner of the diner. But, of course, Jack and his Del Fuegos are coming after the Wild Hogs, angry and hotter than the chili.

There's the usual traffic of gay jibes and stupid stunts, but in the passing lane throttle up for a few hearty laughs.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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