by Karyn L. Beach

I wish I could say Wild Hogs was a wild ride, but a better word would be mild. Mild and predictable. This is one of those movies that is a true trailer tease. The trailer leads you to believe it's going to be a lot better than it is- when, in reality, the trailer contains all the highlights of the movie.

The wild hogs are a group of middle-aged men who get together once a week to ride their bikes and have a beer or two at the local yuppie 'biker bar.' There's Doug (Tim Allen), the former college party-boy who's morphed into the workaholic dentist and family man. Next up there is Bobby (Martin Lawrence), the wannabe writer who's henpecked to death by his wife (Tichina Arnold). The third our hog is Dudley, a real dud who's lousy on the bike and even worse with the ladies. Finally, there is Woody (John Travolta), the successful lawyer who's married to a super-model. He seems to have it together but appearances can be deceiving. In an effort to inject some adventure in their lives, they head out on the open road. On the way, they find real bikers, real courage and maybe even real love.

If it sounds hokey, it's because it is. Do we really have to guess what's going on here? Do you think the henpecked husband will be such a doormat at the end? Do you think the one unluckiest in love will find luck and love by the end?

Again, most of the good bits are in the trailer and the first half of the road trip is full of 'we're guys on a trip but we're not gay' jokes. I'm all for physical comedy, but how many times do we have to see William H. Macy drive into something, over something and through something else before it gets a bit tired.

This was a long 99 minutes. The presence of Ray Liotta as the leader of a real biker gang and Marisa Tomei as Dudley's love interest aren't enough to save this film. At the end there was a cameo from the original Easy Rider, an almost unrecognizable Peter Fonda. But given that he was in this movie, maybe he was trying to be unrecognizable.