Wild Hogs

At first glance, the biker comedy "Wild Hogs" looks like a Disney-fied makeover of "Easy Rider" on a middle-age, crazy road trip. It turns out to be "City Slickers" on two-wheeled chariots with black leather jackets and helmets in place of chaps and cowboy hats. Tim Allen and John Travolta ostensibly lead their social club of a middle-age biker gang, Allen as a college daredevil turned middle-class dentist with career envy and Travolta as a high-roller businessman whose fortune and marriage have just gone bust. Allen falls back on his blank grin when stuck for something to do, and Travolta huffs and puffs himself into a performance of exasperated panic and a look of chronic constipation. Martin Lawrence rides in support, cast out of pure commercial calculation (he's a full generation younger than his riding buddies). Only William H. Macy feels at home in his role as a klutzy software nerd, hilariously clueless as a road hazard on wheels and a social hazard on foot. These guys were born to be mild and the actors are content to gum their roles rather than take a bite out of them. Fueled by a half-tank of low-octane comedy and lubricated with so much synthetic oil that it barely raises any dramatic friction, "Wild Hogs" is more toothless spoof than midlife crisis comedy. Ray Liotta co-stars as the scuzzy leader of the desert motorcycle rats with whom they inevitably tangle, Marisa Tomei provides romantic interest, and John C. McGinley camps it up as a way-too-friendly highway patrolman.

The film was a surprise hit (a sequel is already in the works) and the DVD fills the saddlebags with supplements. In addition to commentary by director Walt Becker and writer Brad Copeland and the featurette "Bikes, Brawls and Burning Bars: The Making of Wild Hogs" is an alternate ending (a reunion with McGinley as the fun-loving highway patrolman), two brief (and unnecessary) deleted scenes, outtakes, and the three-minute comic piece "How to Get Your Wife to Let You Buy a Motorcycle," which isn't really gonna help you much if you are, in fact, trying to get your wife/husband/significant other to let you buy a motorcycle. Also available in Blu-ray format.