They are queasy riders who were born to be reviled. At least as they appear in today’s sophomoric comedy of mild-mannered motorcyclers in midlife crisis, these “Wild Hogs” don’t exactly bring home the bacon.
John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, Tim Allen and William H. Macy in leather are certainly affable enough, individually and collectively, to the extent that their own real-life personalities are allowed to emerge through the slop that is the lazy, mechanical “Hogs” screenplay. But as written by debuting hack Brad Copeland and directed with the cinematic equivalent of a sledgehammer by Walt Becker (“National Lampoon’s Van Wilder”), it mangles a potentially amusing premise by resorting to the lamest good-guy-versus-bad-guy clichés for plot and skeletal stock stereotypes for characters. To wit:
