Wild Hogs

I must admit, when I saw the trailer for Wild Hogs, my first reaction was, wild horses couldn't drag me to it. Paunchy, punchy over-the-hill 'stars' (John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence) pulling on their leathers and mounting their Harleys for what promised to be mucho gay gags and lame-o slapstick - who wants to see that? And what the heck is a class act like William H Macy doing in dreck like this?

Well, as to Macy's involvement your guess is as good as mine, but it turned out I was mistaken: lots and lots of people wanted to see this movie. In fact, after 300, it's been this season's runaway hit at the US box office. I decided to skip the wild horses and plod to the cinema on my own two feet - but I went to a punters' screening, not a preview for a room full of critics.

What's the difference? It's part of the critic's job to stay objective on some level. Which can be deadly for a comedy. It's not that critics don't want to have a good time, but they can't surrender themselves to a movie in the way most paying customers will on a Friday night. And laughter is infectious. One reason cinemas will survive in the twenty-first century is that comedies are always funnier in a crowd.

With that in mind, I can report that Wild Hogs seemed to go down well enough with the suburbanites I saw it with: there was a steady buzz of laughter from the first pre-titles sight gag right through the end credits sequence. Most of us don't ask more of a comedy than that.

The stars get an even spread of screen time, though Travolta has the most compelling character - Woody, on the verge of divorce, bankruptcy and a breakdown, though he keeps all this a secret from his riding buddies. It's nerdy computer programmer Dudley (Macy) who gets the girl. Tim Allen is Doug, a dentist who claims to have been a rebel in his youth, but is now thoroughly domesticated and stuck on a low-carb diet. And Martin Lawrence is Bobby, a hen-pecked plumber with a yellow streak.

Calling themselves the 'Wild Hogs' (Doug's wife sewed their patches), the boys take off for a week on the open road - rashly throwing away their mobile phones before they set off. But it takes more than a beer belly and a Harley between your legs to make you a real biker� as hard core biker gang the Del Fuegos mean to prove.

This is City Slickers on two wheels, basically. If audiences are responding, it's because that idea of suburban softies coming up hard against the real world taps into something we recognise, not because the film is any better than it ought to be. Director Walt Becker (Van Wilder) has a heavy hand when it comes to slapstick, and you never believe these four guys have any history together.

No less than Fight Club, Wild Hogs is a film about rediscovering the 'real man' underneath a flabby middleclass exterior. Hitting the road might be part of that. But judging by these movies getting hit is a better measure of masculinity. If you can soak up enough physical punishment, then maybe you're not so gay after all (shades of 300).

It's not what you might call an enlightened metrosexual mentality, but enlightenment probably doesn't pave the road to cheap laughs. Performances are very broad (literally so in Allen's case - he looks flabby, waxy and so stiff you wonder if he's overdosed on Botox) but John C McGinley's queer motorcycle cop and Ray Liotta's raging gang-banger are so over the top they give you license to smile. Curiously, according to tracking statistics, the film goes over better with women� perhaps they're just relieved Martin Lawrence doesn't wear a dress (I know I was).

The movie's biggest joke isn't even on screen. Originally the script featured a run-in with the Hell's Angels. Hilariously, they threatened to sue, so the name was changed. Presumably they figured featuring in a Disney movie would hurt their image.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com