The Film – One Time Should Do It
Wild Hogs is the name of the motorcycle ‘gang’ that a group of men gave themselves some years ago. Since that time they have maintained their friendship, but each has become consumed in their own lives of which none of them feel very happy with. Martin Lawrence’s character, Bobby, for example, is struggling to find a job while his wife maintains a steady unappreciative attitude towards him. Travolta’s character, Woody, is going through a messy divorce and has very little money. It’s ultimately his idea that these four old friends temporarily ditch their lives and go on a long drive with no particular destination. After some convincing, the others agree and the adventure across the country begins.
Throughout the expedition, the four encounter a variety of setbacks and circumstances, ultimately coming to a head when they stumble into a distressed town that is at the mercy of a ‘tough’ motorcycle gang. In reality this ‘tough’ gang is a bunch of goofs, as you would expect in a Disney family adventure movie. The Hogs decide to team up to face the menace and in doing so find the happiness they had all been missing.
The movie is what I would call an enjoyable one-timer. It’s the kind of movie that I had fun watching, although I can’t say any part of it really made me laugh out loud. It got a few chuckles out of me, but the humor is just too generic, even predictable, to be truly funny. Also, I thought the story got off track when the Hogs decided to square off against this rival bike gang to save this town they stumbled into when their bikes ran out of gas. By this time in the movie, the adventure and the comedy was wearing thin, too so I was ready for it to be over about twenty minutes before it did actually end.
Presentation – What We’ve Come To Expect From Disney
The audio and video quality on this Blu-ray release is really quite outstanding. Some of the most impressive Blu-ray movies I have seen have come out of Disney, and this one is no exception. The video quality is really top notch; I can’t recall any artifacting or soft imagery, or really anything significant at all to take away from the visual presentation. The colors, including black backgrounds and materials like the biker’s jackets, looked spot on and very clear. Wild Hogs also features a nice variety of scenery and a wide color palette as most of it takes place outside. The open road, the blue skies, the big flaming fireball (you’ll see) – all looked very, very good.
This isn’t the type of movie you would necessarily use to show off or test your audio system, because there isn’t a whole heck of a lot to listen to besides chatter and the revving of motorcycles – but that said, the audio technical quality is very good. The soundtrack isn’t interesting, but it serves its purpose well enough; basically, this is a no frills movie and the audio is fitting for just that.
Extras – About As Generic As the Film
There is less than thirty minutes of extra features on this release, not including the audio commentary track by the director and screenwriter. There are a couple of uninteresting deleted scenes, a sixteen minute behind the scenes feature that has the typical director and cast interviews, and an empty two minute extra about getting your wife to let you buy a bike – pretty lame. All of this isn’t really worth your time the first time through, much less another go around.