These are worrying times for John Travolta. An icon of the disco era and two-time Oscar nominee, he now takes second billing to Tim Allen, an icon only to devotees of The Santa Clause franchise.

Allen plays Doug, a forty-something dentist stung by his family’s implications that he is ‘lame’. How dare they, when he and his buddies spend every weekend riding (carefully) around the suburbs on their beloved Harley Davidsons?

Doug’s fellow ‘Wild Hogs’ are Woody (Travolta), an outwardly successful entrepreneur whose business and marriage to a supermodel are actually on the rocks, hen-pecked plumber Bobby (Lawrence), and computer geek Dudley (Macy).

After another tame afternoon, they decide it’s time to live the biker dream, and soon they’re throwing caution and cellphones to the wind on a week-long, guys-only trip to California.

But the bonding experience starts to go round the bend when an amorous highway cop (John C. McGinley) takes a shine to their camp. Then they fall foul of the Del Fuegos, a gang of two-wheeled trouble-causers led by bad boy Jack (Liotta).

The Hogs find refuge in Madrid – that’s “May-drid” - a quiet town periodically plagued by the Del Fuegos and venue of an annual chilli festival. Only one of these points serves the plot.

With the local cops being useless (“For arms training, they just told us to go and play Doom”), the four amigos are on their own for an A-Team-style rumble.

In a film unworthy of him, Macy shows the deftest comic touch. But, like Travolta, Oscar-winner Marisa Tomei ought to worry.

Her role as Macy’s love interest couldn’t be more thankless if she was delivering positive test results at an STD clinic.

And all casting aside, Wild Hogs is still an odd one - a comedy about the trials of middle age pitched at schoolyard level. There are plenty of gags about peeing, pooing, skinny-dipping and bull-slapping – but absolutely no cussing.

If we’re dishing out faint praise, it’s nothing if not simple (as in uncomplicated… and slow-witted) - and it’s at least as funny as any of Tim Allen or Martin Lawrence’s other movies.

Elliott Noble