Sunday, April 22, 2007

Wild Hogs

This, I hasten to add, was Clare's idea. "Lighten-up," she said, "enough of these art-house movies. Let's go to something played just for laughs."

I wish.

John Travolta is the best known of four middle-class men in a collective mid-life crisis. Well, three of them are middle-class and white, while the fourth is black and a plumber. They decide to get on their big bikes and head out on the road to the Pacific, as you do, and proceed to encounter various comic adventures on the way. To stay in touch with what passes for a plot you have to believe, amongst other things
  • A comely female diner owner could fall for a wrinkly, wimpish sixty-something computer programmer (William Macy, that car-salesman guy out of Fargo).
  • Four middle-class bikers could collectively stand up to a 45-strong outlaw biker gang in an extended fight sequence, without becoming mincemeat with bone and gristle.
  • Said biker gang could be stood-down and run out of town by the biker gang leader's ageing father, who turns out to be a good sort.
And about a dozen similar bits of nonsense. None of this would have mattered in the slightest if the film had been amusing.

Clare is properly chagrined and I guess it's back to art-house - or we pick frivolous better!