If you want to see the subtle, yet alarming effect the popularity of animated films is having on regular films, just take a look at "Wild Hogs."

Early in the film, the four main, middle-aged characters hop on their motorcycles and go for a ride. During the course of that ride, the easily distracted and clumsy Dudley Frank (William H. Macy) hits a sign going about 30 mph. In real life, Dudley is in the hospital in traction. But since this is made-for-boneheads filmmaking, Dudley just bounces right up without a scratch. What is this doing to our youth?

The idea of the movie is that four friends, Doug (Tim Allen), Woody (John Travolta), Bobby (Martin Lawrence) and Dudley (Macy), head out for a cross-country trip together to shake off the restraints of contemporary society and the middle-age blahs. Each of them is feeling old and less manly than in the past and this is a chance to feel manly once again. That they piss off a biker gang led by Jack (Ray Liotta) gives them an additional way to prove their manliness. Stand up to the biker gang, save a small town from the gang's bad behavior, and impress a girl (Marisa Tomei), and suddenly all is right with middle-aged manliness.

I don't know who thought to pair Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence in the same film, but it's kind of like comedy's version of bleach and vinegar (which produces a deadly, toxic vapor for all you kids out there). Seriously, drop one of these guys in a movie and it's usually death, but both? Neither of them can muster enough acting skill to move even a micron away from their default personas. It's sad. If they were singers, they'd be tone deaf.

Emergency response personnel refer to motorcycle riders as "organ donors" for a reason. They fall. They die. "Wild Hogs" isn't a cartoon, yet it gives its characters the same facile endurance of cartoon characters. This is bad filmmaking, and irresponsible to boot. A person who tries to lift a car and dislocates his shoulders because he saw Mr. Incredible do it is an idiot, but when that same dope is mimicking a live-actor role model, it's harder to say where his idiocy ends and the filmmaker's idiocy begins. "Wild Hogs" takes the audience down a road to nowhere.