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Four weekend-warrior friends decide to rev up their ho-hum suburban lives with a cross-country motorcycle adventure. They don their leathers, fire up their hogs and throw caution and their cell phones to the wind as they hit the open highway. But a lot can happen on the road to the Pacific, including small town romance and a run-in with Del Fuegos — a rough biker gang who don’t take kindly to the wannabes.

Knowing that Wild Hogs is a supremely mainstream film, pandering to the backyard BBQ family crowds, I had my mind ready to coast and try to enjoy the ride. The first twenty minutes or so introduces bland-life dentist Doug Madsen (Tim Allen), financially crashing Woody Stevens (John Travolta), hen-pecked Bobby Davis (Martin Lawrence), and grown- up geek Dudley Frank (William H. Macy) acquainting us next with a vengeful motorcycle gang leader Jack (Ray Liotta) and a romantic, small town love interest Maggie (Marisa Tomei). Yeah, screen time for each of these Hollywood heavy-weights is a juggling match for director Walt Becker, which he admits, with a big smile, as the number one challenge of putting this film together. I relish road movies, but as I was watching this one, I was astonished at how forcibly structured this film felt, from the introductions to the adventure, despite trying to go with the flow.

Do I believe these guys are suburban men who like to break out on the open road with their Harleys? You bet. Is it easy to feel for their ordinary frustrations in life? Sure. But the by-the-book introduction of the principals, their camp going up in flames, the stagy confrontation at the bar (subtlety would have made it feel more authentic), and especially the rally of the biker-oppressed isolated town, all feel like such a dog- gone put on instead of a free flowing adventure that it’s hard not to get frustrated. Sure, some of the jokes made me laugh, but the story never feels as whimsical and adventurous as wonderful road movies achieve.

The pedigrees onscreen should have helped. All of the principal actors seem to be having a great time, even if they only have a modicum of chemistry among one another. It’s fun to see Travolta be stubborn, fib, and go a little wacky and skittish. Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence act just like Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence, which isn’t a bad thing but they certainly do not stretch themselves to be different, interesting characters for a frickin' change! Are they scared, or what?

However, William H. Macy makes his nerd-man different, interesting, and the most prone to make me laugh. And while I like Ray Liotta in almost everything he does (and he curiously looks exactly like a boss I had 10 years ago), he seems miscast for some reason; he doesn’t seem to have the innate heft and grizzled believability for his character (and he seems too young; Gunnar Hanson, Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s original Leatherface, would have been dang perfect.) Thankfully, Marisa Tomei and Jill Hennessy are believable and a treat.

Grossing over $250 million world wide, it’s not hard to deduce that many folks liked this crowd pleaser, even if other critics and myself weren’t so excited by it. Admitedly, some adlib joking amuses, and even without a ton of style, Walt Becker (Van Wilder) does direct the film with a simple confidence; it’s easy to watch for the most part.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The film’s theatrical aspect ratio 2.35:1 is presented in anamorphic video. This is a great looking transfer. Colors are vividly saturated in virtually all scenes providing a surprisingly rich tapestry of varying hues considering the ordinary landscapes. With edge halos absent and grain at a minimum, small object detail is nicely realized even in distant, long shots. The rich, deep blacks only improve things. Note the carnival scene around 1:01 where the exterior, black night sky behind Martin Lawrence fades into the widescreen bars. All this without much black crush, compression noise, or excessive grain. Occasionally, a few scenes can look a tad faded, but I couldn’t discern if this is intended to enhance the mood of the specific scene or whether it was fault with the film print. These well produced and authored attributes to this DVD can be very revealing of finely grained textures; the inevitable close ups of some of the male principles reveal more than a small amount of make up. This is an impressive transfer from Buena Vista.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

The disc includes a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix.  While the video quality is better than expected, the audio is mostly front heavy and doesn’t make the best use of the 5.1 soundscape; with all of the locations and activities, I really expected more discrete use from the surrounds. As it is, the front speakers do provide a pleasing expanse of sound that exhibits some breadth of imagining from the right or left. The center speaker is included with the sound effects besides providing extremely clear dialogue. The low frequency effects make the subwoofer come alive with those crankin’ Harleys and a few explosions, but it could have been deeper more aggressive. The surrounds have a very clean and somewhat expansive frequency response from the midrange on up; airy wind, ambiance, and music bleeding from the fronts dominate the surrounds. For a high-profile, big budgeted film, the lack of any discrete rear activity with richer, deeper dynamics ignores one of the major intents and benefits of 5.1 surround sound: full-range, distinct surrounds. 

 Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

An audio commentary with director Walt Becker and writer Brad Copeland is included. Both are very casual and relate many back stories for the scenes on the screen that are often quite funny. Some technical issues are discussed, but mostly the men like to gently gab about trivia and their fawning of the cast. Not bad.

Next up is a sixteen minute featurette Bikeds, Brawls and Buring Bars: The Making of Wild Hogs. Principal actors and primary filmmakers discuss the enthusiasm of making the film and more than a few interesting tid bits of trivia. With a movie star-looking mug that may have made the cast jealous, handsome director Walt Becker is a huge motorcycle fan and biker himself who gained the respect of the others involved. Tons of behind the scenes footage is included here.

The next featurette (2:49) is How to Get Your Wife to Let You Buy a Motorcycle. Stunt coordinator, Jack Gill, simply gives tips on, yes, the title of this featurette. Most of his interview ends up being narration over clips of the film. Yeah, it’s a flimsy featurette.

An alternate ending is included with optional commentary by director Walt Becker and writer Brad Copeland. Not as good as the original ending, this ending is kind of funny and worth a look.

Two Deleted scenes Acute Molar Abscess and Chili Pepper Abuse (scene-only) are included with optional commentary by director Walt Becker and writer Brad Copeland. The first scene is one of Tim Allen’s better jokes, and the second scene is a bit flat in content, and it is without post-production sound (it’s just raw sound).

A Play All option is conveniently included for the alternate ending and deleted scenes.

Outtakes (2:34) are in 2.35:1 widescreen and stereo; they are energetic, goofy fun. It’s always a pleasure.

Trailers include: The Nightmare Before Christmas, ABC Family (a collage of shows including three quick highlights from Mike Restaino’s cherished TV show, The Gilmore Girls), Santa Clause Three: The Escape Clause, Ugly Betty, Gray’s Anatomy Season Three, and The Invisible.

The DVD comes with a semi-shiny slip-case with the exact same front and back cover art as the keepcase.

Per an insert in the keepcase, A Wild Hogs Sweepstakes at wildhogsdvd.com/harley allows any legal USA resident 18 years or older to enter the sweepstakes for a chance to win a Harley-Davidson Motorcycle or other great prizes. You don’t even have to purchase this DVD. The website also includes a photo gallery with twelve shots. Other cool available downloads are wallpaper, buddy icons, and a screensaver. Plus, five different games (best used with a high speed Internet connection).

The 100-minute film is organized into sixteen chapters.

Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?

There are no DVD-ROM features on this DVD.