Wild Hogs is a movie that probably sounded great on paper, but ended up looking like it was specifically engineered for me to hate. “Let’s take a bunch of middle-aged actors known for taking softball family comedy rolls, make them suburban Dads, slap them on Harley’s and make a road picture! Wait, what’s that? Ray Romano dropped out? Well, who can we get to replace him? William H. Macy?… He doesn’t quite fit, but what the hell!”

If I can take a sidebar for a moment, seriously, what is William H. Macy doing in this movie? He always struck me as more of an Actor’s actor, if you know what I mean. High-minded. Accomplished. Uh… y’know, talented. I mean, he found The Atlantic Theater with David Mamet, for crying out loud!

I have it in my head that his participation in this movie has to be rooted in some deep Machevelian scheme to get close to John Travolta, Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence in hopes of tapping into their influence within Hollywood. For whatever reason, studio executives keep tossing money to those chuckleheads. Maybe Macy thought he could do a little networking and get one of them to produce one of his projects in the future. It’s the only way I can still respect him as an actor.

I find Wild Hogs offensive as a concept because it’s another example of mainstream media coddling Baby Boomers and re-enforcing this ideal that they are more special than anyone else. I’ve talked about this before, but this movie seems to be like The Perfect Storm of boomer self-absorption.

It’s this whole “Let’s do what we want” attitude that turns me off. Buying a Harley and talking your friends into a cross country trip. How does this fill a hole in your existence? What about your family? What about a little self-examination? No, let’s buy an expensive toy and ditch our responsibilities for three weeks. Disgusting.

>Oh, and one more thing, you’re not fooling anyone with that hair weave, John.

That about covers it for today. Thanks again to Josh Anderson and Gordon McAlpin for their guest strips this week. I’m going back to a full schedule next week, so I’ll see you here again on Monday!

Have a great weekend!