Wild Hogs

Plot synopsis:
Doug Madsen (Tim Allen), Woody Stevens (John Travolta), Bobby Davis (Martin Lawrence) and Dudley Frank (William H. Macy) are four middle-aged suburban men in Cincinnati who find themselves frustrated with the pace of daily life. Woody is a formerly rich businessman who suddenly finds himself alone and broke. Doug is a dentist who cant connect with his son, and he misses his college glory days when he was called The Golden Knight. Bobby is a plumber who is henpecked by his wife and daughters while trying to follow his dream of writing a plumbing how-to book. Dudley is a computer geek who seeks to find a woman in his life. Their one collective hobby had always been to ride together on motorcycles around the city, though after college that happened less and less often.When Woody finds out that his marriage is ending in divorce and that he's bankrupt, he suggests they embark on a cross-country road trip west on their bikes to seek adventure. After some hesitation from the other three, the four agree to the trip and set off on their Harley-Davidsons.The road trip is filled with humorous moments, such as sleeping close together scantily dressed and being found by a policeman (John C. McGinley) who tells them they can be charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, but it turns out that he is only teasing: he is actually jealous. Later, when the four go to a small lake, a family on a picnic joins them in the water only to realize the four men are naked. The policeman appears again; he also undresses and joins the four men, who quickly leave.The fun ends when the four stop at a bar and stumble onto a real motorcycle gang called the Del Fuegos. Del Fuego leader Jack (Ray Liotta) tricks the foursome into a bum motorcycle trade, then tells them they are nothing compared to real bikers, especially Del Fuegos founder Damien Blade, and that they should leave before something else bad happens.Less than a mile away, Woody stops, disgraced at what just transpired. He tells his friends that he will go back to the bar to retrieve Dudley's bike, but when he gets back there, a courageous Woody cuts the fuel lines on the gang's motorcycles and takes Dudleys bike. He returns to his friends with the bike (to much astonishment) and explains that he simply threatened the gang with legal action. When the Del Fuegos realize what has transpired, provoked by the Wild Hogs riding past the bar again, Jack orders his gang to follow the Wild Hogs. When Jack errantly tosses his cigarette, it hits gasoline on the ground and triggers a chain reaction that blows up the bar. The Del Fuegos swear revenge.Meanwhile, because of Woodys insistence that they should not stop for any reason, the Wild Hogs run out of gas and have to walk their bikes a long distance until reaching the small town of Madrid, only to discover they have to stay the night to wait for the fuel station to open. The four are first mistaken for actual Del Fuegos and feared, but once the mistake is cleared up, the Madrid Sheriff tells the Wild Hogs that the Del Fuegos terrorize the town yearly and the small police force who received weapons training by playing the video game Doom is unable to do anything about them.At a chili festival that night, Dudley furthers his interest in Maggie (Marisa Tomei) the owner of the local diner. As he courts her, Bobby comes across two Del Fuegos in town (who have spotted the Wild Hogs and informed Jack). Thinking himself untouchable, because of Woodys previous explanation, Bobby humiliates the two bikers. Under orders from Jack, the two Del Fuegos refuse to do anything and Bobby ends up squirting them with ketchup and mustard. The town praises the Wild Hogs as saviors, considering them a friendly biker gang who can protect them.Dudley spends the night with Maggie. The next morning, the Del Fuegos arrive en masse and Jack yells to the townspeople that his gang will vandalize the town, starting with the diner, until the Wild Hogs come out to fight. Woody reveals his lie about the biker bar incident, plus his reason to take the trip (his divorce) and his friends are disappointed with his deceit. When the Del Fuegos start to wreck Maggies diner, Dudley goes out to meet them. The rest of the Wild Hogs eventually back up Dudley and a four-on-four fistfight begins between four Del Fuego bikers and the Wild Hogs. Easily outmatched, the Wild Hogs are beaten up, but refuse to stay down and see the diner destroyed. With their dignity on the line, they continue to get up and take punch after punch, much to the amazement and fury of Jack. Just then, the townspeople arrive carrying makeshift weapons to defend their new friends; they demand the Del Fuegos leave the Wild Hogs alone and get out of town. The situation is defused by the arrival of Damien Blade himself (Peter Fonda). Blade chastises Jack and the Del Fuegos for picking on four men and the townspeople, and reveals he actually thought his bar was a dump and explained that he insured the bar for twice what it was worth. We also learn that Jack is Damien's son, and he points out to Jack how he forgot what being out on the open road is about, and that it doesn't involve thuggish behavior and violence. Jack's split-second transformation from the ultimate bully into a guilty-faced momma's boy is almost as priceless as Woody's earlier impersonation of a tough Marlon Brandoesque biker earlier on. The Del Fuegos, feeling guilty, leave and offers a friendly good-bye to the Wild Hogs. In a salute to Fonda's own memorable role in Easy Rider, Blade tells the Wild Hogs that they need to "lose the watches," referring to the Easy Rider scene when, just before departing on their cross-country chopper-born odyssey, Fonda's character takes off his watch and throws it in the dirt.Bobby and Dougs wives arrive in town, giving Bobby the chance to tell his wife that he dislikes how she controls him, and the two reconcile. Doug impresses his son by telling him of the adventures. Dudley tells Maggie he will return to town soon to enjoy more time with her, and the four head finally continue on to the Pacific coast.The closing credits include excerpts from a faux episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition where the Del Fuegos are given a brand new bar. Jack can barely restrain his emotions as he views it.

Tags: humor

Review:
Containing a diverse cast that works quite well, a handful of funny cameos, tons of predictable yet enjoyable scenarios, and a rather surprising amount of physical humor; Wild Hogs is a startlingly delightful comedy that isn't afraid to reach low for a laugh.
Coming off as more than just a guilty pleasure, we have good acting running the show, as our longtime cinema veterans mesh together and bring out their best comedic skills to deliver a nice trip through the United States.Wild Hogs follows four middle-aged men losing excitement (among other things) in their daily aspects of life.
Doug (Tim Allen) isn't the fun guy he used to be, Bobby (Martin Lawrence) is not able to run his own home, Woody (John Travolta) has lost pretty much everything, and Dudley (William H.
Adventures are searched for, and John Travolta (not acting his best in this movie) has the saving idea for his buddies: a real road trip on their bikes instead of their usual short trip to a biker bar once a week.Like in "City Slickers" the men have to go through some adventures and become heroes before they emerge with new energy to battle the next years of getting older ...
The movie starts off slow and is reminiscent of a couple of failed Tim Allen projects (Shaggy Dog and Zoom), but after about 15 minutes it shifts gear and becomes a wonderful comedy well worth spending the admission fee.
I attended a pre-release screening of the movie in Philadelphia, and I went in expecting a lot of zany sequences, funny violence and a truckload of laughs, and I wasn't disappointed.Messrs.
Travolta, Allen, Lawrence and Macy fit their parts well, and while the story doesn't demand a lot from the actors, they are good as middle-aged professionals tired of their boring lives.
I just got back from the theater and I gotta say, Wild Hogs was hilarious!It's a great mid-life-crisis type movie.
Making straight-up funny jokes like peeing on the side of the road and phrases like "...If we're gonna drink p***, we're gonna drink it cold!".A couple hilarious scenes with Ray Liotta as a VERY bad boy as he usually plays and John C.
Light as a feather and dumb as a brick, Wild Hogs flounders about lifelessly whenever Macy isn't on the screen.The paper thin plot, which exists simply to hook a series of sight gags and skits onto, centers around four lifelong friends who are all suffering different mid-life crisis.
He does have a romantic subplot with a sweet small town waitress (Marisa Tomei), but the movie forgets to give them a reason to fall in love or anything resembling a real relationship, since Tomei's character maybe has four minutes worth of dialogue in the entire film.
Not even a last minute cameo by Peter Fonda earns its laugh, because the movie makes the fatal mistake of thinking that the star of Easy Rider playing a legendary biker is funny by itself, instead of giving him something actually funny to go along with his role.I have no problem with respectable actors like Macy and Liotta appearing in silly movies like this, as long as the film itself is up to their talents.
The entire movie itself winds up being a bust even as a buddy road trip comedy, as we never truly believe that the four main characters are friends to begin with.
I am not the kind of person who rates everything 1's or 10's, nor do I write reviews regularly, but there was something singularly distasteful about this film that begged for a reaming on IMDb. I honest to god felt slightly brain-damaged for almost cracking a smile toward the end.Whether it was the phoned in performances of the four leads, or the asinine plot, or the ham-fisted comedy, or the sense that the joke was one massive gay joke, I can't be sure, but I can't begin to express the depths of my loathing for this paint by numbers mess.I feel bad for William H.
If this picture took 39,000,000 it's first weekend, then all I can say is there must have been a whole-hell-of-a-bunch of angry and disappointed movie goers.In all honesty, the only thing this disaster has in it's favor is some great names, some good looking scenery, and nice bikes.I really feel sorry for the actors, i.e., I can only hope they are laughing all the way to the bank because not one laugh did it get from me (and I laugh EASY!).Films like City Slickers never brought hearty laughs, but compared to this mess, the former was the funniest movie EVER.The only people I can recommend this movie to are HEAVY fans of the stars in it, or to parents that don't want to fall asleep while with their kids in a family flick.Bottom line: PATHETIC!.
But we looked at each other half way through and said "This is SO bad." The worst part, for me, was seeing John Travolta and William Macy in this unfunny,poorly written, and terribly directed mistake.
As a 48 year old weekend biker I was very much looking forward to this film, but after reading the overwhelmingly positive reviews by other posters I have to wonder if I saw a different version of this movie.
The fact that THREE of the lead actors appeared on the Leno Show is a sure indicator something needs selling - but oh dear...It all ambles along, but it is with a huge sense of predictability, and the comedy is just horrible.There's only one thing monumentally wrong with Wild Hogs: it just ain't funny.
It looks and feels like City Slickers, without the charm of Billy Crystal (And let's face it...) Sure, it is harmless enough - in fact too harmless - the script and editing for my taste are really TV quality - you'll see better film making in Heroes or Entourage, at least an attempt to say something with the celluloid - and the performances are all sooooo predictable.It tries to manufacture a mid-west charm in the little town of Madrid but it feels rushed throughout - quickly made and quickly thought through.Hugely disappointing - what a shame!
Considering the fact that the film had some serious "A" list actors...it's was a pitiful example of a bunch of stars getting together to have a good ole time making a piece of garbage.
Otherwise, it's hard to understand what motivated them to be in this silly comedy that will not add anything to their resumes.On the other hand, it's easy to see Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence involved in the project because they are basically television products that only aspire to just a certain degree of what could pass for "acting".The film reminds us of better made films like "City Sleekers", just to name one.
This is one of those comedies where they save almost all of the good out-of-context humor for the trailer and practically give away the plot to draw you into the theater, but never really offer much more.More or less the basic premise is your four, suburban, middle-aged men who have had a bike "gang" for a number of years coming to the revelation of the total monotony of their lives.
Macy, John Travolta, Tim Allen, and Martin Lawrence, despite being limited by some terrible dialogue and cookie cutter characters, for the most part give hilarious performances and have great on-screen chemistry with one another.
Many minor characters fail due to the disappointing platter of lines they've been given, a contributing factor to why this may be the worst performance of Ray Liotta's career.It rakes in some laughs, sometimes pushing the PG-13 envelope to its limits in a fashion quite unusual for a film that could've easily gotten a PG rating, if not for its intentional marketing to the 30-55 demographic (the same as its characters) its intended to reach; not daringly offensive to receive an R, nor kiddie enough for a PG, but trying its hardest to be as watered-down PG-13 as possible with its share of aptly fitting racial remarks, homosexual undertones, crude sex humor, and sporadic profanity.The movie has some very good comedic moments, however, some of which are surprisingly clever and well-executed, but many that fall victim to many Hollywood comedy stereotypes, such as the "One main character who does something that only he and the audience knows about and we will milk humor from this for the entire middle act" syndrome and various others including the romantic redemption for the geek and the token black guy.Overall, if you want a socially acceptable, moderately funny, assembly line comedy with the inspirational message you will see in about 20 other mainstream releases this year, you won't be disappointed.
EVERYONE else please stay home, watch it on DVD and don't reward John Travolta and Tim Allen for another movie-mill POC like I did.
I'm also quite certain this was somehow engineered from the mind of Travolta.John McGinley (Scrubs - Dr. Cox) and Steven Toboloksky (Groundhogs Day - Needle-nose Ned) were relatively predictable in their trademarked characters, but not disappointing.The story/script were almost none existent and completely riddled with glaring goofs (maybe intentionally, either that or terrible editing - I'm going with the latter.) Visually the movie was pretty good (else I wouldhave gone all the way down to a 2 of 10.) Nothing impressive, but a budget can do wonders for a flicks visuals.
Nah- that would mean soccer moms would have to think for 90 minutes.) However; in the end I would say a good 75% of the audience (mostly mid-aged men themselves and their wives) seemed to have a ruckus good time so I'm sure we're bound to be served up another meal from the trough next off season - Wild Hogs 2 "Del Fuegos visit Cincinnati." Take your early teen kids(they're exposed to a lot worse every day in school) and enjoy your stupid movie.PS- As far as the all the homophobia and John T.- I'm sure this is a cry for help.
In "Wild Hogs," four middle-aged, suburban bikers (John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H.
To all those who are afraid to spend the money because of negative comments: Don't listen to the "critics", this movie is entertaining from beginning to end, and even during the closing credits there is a pretty funny surprise.
In this movie, 4-friends: Woody (Travolta), Doug (Allen), Bobby (Lawrence) and Dudley (Macy) want to put the excitement back in their lives and decide to take a cross country trip on their motorcycles.
I mean its 100% predictable, which is not usually a problem in most comedies but this, wow, really bad.The movie is in limbo between totally off the wall Home Alone style humor (where the main characters get mortally wounded ever 2 minutes on screen with successive jokes) and some sort of realistic Seinfeld humor.
It is the waste that is created when producers serve up a shallow script, with proved box office superstars and a formulaic (see "idiotic") plot, and, time and time again, receive mass consumption.Box-office money makers Tim Allen (as Doug, the aging dentist), John Travolta (as Woody, the aging playboy whose wife has just left him), Martin Lawrence (Bobby, the henpecked husband), and respected actor William H.
Macy (Dudley, the geeky tech guy) form middle aged, suburbanite motorcycle "gang" Wild Hogs.A combination of nagging wives, disrespectful sons, empty bank accounts, and midlife crises light a fire under the sagging behinds of our protagonists, prompting them to embark on a cross-country road trip.One of the few things uninspired director Walt Becker ("Van Wilder") gets right is the soundtrack, featuring classic rock anthems ("Slow Ride," "Who Do You Love?") and hard rock/metal gems from AC/DC and White Zombie.
For Travolta's sake, I hope Quentin Tarantino never glimpses his cringe worthy jaunt to Bobby Brown's "My Prerogative." Quentin might think twice before trying to jump-start Vinnie Barbarino's career for a second time.By the time the Wild Hogs run afoul of a real motorcycle gang, led by Ray Liotta, is there anyone out there who is unsure whether the heroes will cure their ills, long for their families, find a new love and save the day?
Allen, Travolta, Lawrence and Macy look and act like real people in everyday life.
I love the guy and I wanted to see him back on screen, but he made his last good film a long time ago, when he was still funny.
John Travolta is also in for the ride and although I think he doesn't care which role he plays anymore and that he lost credibility at the end of last decade, he has reached the lowest level; and yet he's the best of the four main characters, trying very hard to steal the show.I was very intrigued by the name of William H.
Macy pretty much stole the movie because 'Dudley', his character, was so naive in every situation you couldn't help but laugh at a 50 year old man that had so little life experience...
Bored and disappointed with their ordinary lives, 4 bikers plan to get away for a week and explore the open road.Every biker, or simply every person, has dreamed of just packing in their ordinary day to day lives and hitting the open road and leaving their problems behind, and this ideology is explored in this tame and unfunny "comedy".I currently can't ride a motorbike but have been a pillion on my dad's for years and we have had some great exploring adventures and this film puts the ideology of exploring and adventure to shame by throwing in clichés, unfunny sequences and sadly a list of Hollywood Oscar nominees who you won't believe to be this poor.You would never have believed Travolta (Saturday Night Fever) and Macy (Fargo) would be Oscar nominees by their performances in this atrocious film, and this comes from a person who loves these two actors.
Travolta's desperate and inspirational speech to convince his friends to come on the trip had me turning away it was so clichéd inspirational, with that atrocious cheesy music spurring in the background.From there we see plenty of stereotypes such as the hard nut bikers and a gay cop who is played by John C McGinley of Scrubs, and being a huge fan of Dr Cox I was ashamed to watch, like other parts of the film.The one and only good thing about this film is the directed sequences of the bikers on the open road, cruising down highways with some chilled music playing.Bad performances and exceptionally poor writing, wild hogs follows the current trend of comic convention and doesn't live up to every biker's fantasy.
Great cast, good rating on IMDb, road trip comedy, I thought this would be a fun movie.
A couple of saving graces in the movie were John Mcginley as a gay, adventurous cop and William H Macy as the nerdy "Wild Hog", he had a couple of good one liners and played the role of the geek with no pretensions well.
One of my husband's coworkers, a biker himself who liked the movie, gave us the DVD which we watched on Saturday night and had a good time.
Macy is a great actor, Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence are funny, and i have enjoyed much of John Travoltas previous work.
Everyone was enjoying it, and it showed.Performances from the main characters were well done, the story was 'middle-aged angst' done for the umpteenth time, no doubt, but well executed by the cast.The closing scene run during the end-movie credits added to the insanity/hilarity of it all.
and that's saying something.I haven't laughed like that in years, the way that everything came together was just perfect.As always, Ray Liota does an excellent job as the main villain, and it's been ages since Tim Allen made a GOOD movie.This movie is a refreshing change from most films that you have to be a genius to analyze and enjoy.The only thing that really bothered me was the predictable sit-through ending...
Wild Hogs has a simple plot and is easy to get into, the actors were good and Travolta is so good he shines in every movie he is in.
William H.Macy,martin Lawrence,Tim Allen and John Travolta were fantastic.
The movie begins with four unlucky middle aged friends named Woody(John Travolta), Bobby(Martin Lawrence), Doug(Tim Allen), and the blissfully ignorant Dudley(William H.
"Wild Hogs" the new comedy from Tim Allen, John Travolta, Bill Macy and Martin Lawrence is a good comedy that entertains throughout but is far from scintillating.
And in watching it, I can see why.Wild Hogs chronicles the story of four middle-aged friends (played by John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H.
I loved the beauty and good acting of Marisa Tomei as Maggi!.ABOUTH THE MOVIE: The film is about four friends in their middle age: Doug, Woody, Bobby and Dudley, who like to spend some time riding bikes as the Wild Hogs, Doug (Tim Allen) is a dentist with a common family, Woody (John Travolta) is a divorced, broke businessman and liar, who was the one that influenced the others, Bobby (Martin Lawrence) was a good husband that didn't worked and whose wife was like a tiger in a cell; finally Dudley (William H.
I thought this movie was a complete waste of an excellent cast.The jokes tended to fall flat.The music was hackneyed and uninspired, and the sound cues actually worked against the comedic timing.I wasn't made to care about the characters mid-life crisis as none of them was fleshed out enough for me to be interested in their plight.All in all, this was one of the most boring films I've seen in quite awhile and some of it was so bad I felt like walking out.Actor Ray Liotta was scary, not good scary, just really creepy as an outlaw biker.
I mean, sure, it could've been a lot better and funnier and that ending needs work, but Wild Hogs is just a harmless little movie that'll kill 100 minutes of your time.