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Movie Review: Wild Hogs
I liked this movie so much better when it was called City Slickers.
Wild Hogs is the kind of movie you get when you string together four stereotypes without making any of them truly likable and weave that into a story whose event arc is as predictable as a stopwatch. There's a laziness to the production - inaccurate locations, tv-sitcom level writing, continuity errors without number - that makes for a really unpleasant movie experience.
There's a fish-out-of-water, ever so homophobic theme that runs throughout and becomes exceedingly tiresome after the first half hour or so. We're left to wonder if Macy's character is gay - obviously Travolta's is not, thank you very much - because his actions are so vaguely written, finally let off the hook somewhere in New Mexico when he's paired with Marisa Tomei and actually given something to do besides act the idiot. It's a May-September romance with no chemistry, but at least it gives us something pretty to look at.
Strangely, although we are given to understand that the foursome are riding from Ohio to California - through Illinois, Missouri - jumping past Kansas (thank God for that) straight to New Mexico - we are never shown terrain from anywhere but the desert Southwest. Even the scenes supposedly shot in Cincinnati are obviously in Albuquerque. Get off your asses, production company, and at least have some stock footage of the locations where the story supposedly is!
I was relieved when it finally came to the inevitable climax. Even Peter Fonda's appearance - in a deus ex machina rescue of the heros - in the obligatory Easy Rider reference, didn't help.
2 out of 5 stars.
Wild Hogs is the kind of movie you get when you string together four stereotypes without making any of them truly likable and weave that into a story whose event arc is as predictable as a stopwatch. There's a laziness to the production - inaccurate locations, tv-sitcom level writing, continuity errors without number - that makes for a really unpleasant movie experience.
There's a fish-out-of-water, ever so homophobic theme that runs throughout and becomes exceedingly tiresome after the first half hour or so. We're left to wonder if Macy's character is gay - obviously Travolta's is not, thank you very much - because his actions are so vaguely written, finally let off the hook somewhere in New Mexico when he's paired with Marisa Tomei and actually given something to do besides act the idiot. It's a May-September romance with no chemistry, but at least it gives us something pretty to look at.
Strangely, although we are given to understand that the foursome are riding from Ohio to California - through Illinois, Missouri - jumping past Kansas (thank God for that) straight to New Mexico - we are never shown terrain from anywhere but the desert Southwest. Even the scenes supposedly shot in Cincinnati are obviously in Albuquerque. Get off your asses, production company, and at least have some stock footage of the locations where the story supposedly is!
I was relieved when it finally came to the inevitable climax. Even Peter Fonda's appearance - in a deus ex machina rescue of the heros - in the obligatory Easy Rider reference, didn't help.
2 out of 5 stars.
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That said, your mileage may vary. It is a road movie on motorcycles, after all.