You know the drill. Four guys in the midst of their midlife crises decide they need adventure. Why not hit the road on those motorcycles they ride on weekends? They might just find a renewed sense of possibility in their lives.

That's the all-too-familiar basis for the comedy Wild Hogs, but I have to admit I was looking forward to it anyway. At the very least, it would be interesting to see how John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, Tim Allen and William H. Macy - unlikely comic companions - fit into the same comedy.

Casting like this could have produced something quirky and fun. Instead, it results in a broadly gauged laugh machine that goes for all the most obvious jokes. This approach might turn Wild Hogs into a small hit, but it won't do much to endear the movie to anyone in search of something novel.

To keep the movie firmly on its formula track, each of the men receives a paint-by-numbers personality. Travolta plays a former hotshot whose beautiful wife recently left him, Lawrence portrays a plumber whose wife bosses him around, Macy appears as a single computer geek who falls apart around women, and Allen plays a dentist whose life has lost its luster.

And, no, the movie never really solves its essential riddle: It can't quite blend these disparate actors into the same wild ride of a movie.

Wild Hogs won't give you much time to think about such problems, though; the movie quickly has the men mounting their bikes, roaring out of Cincinnati and heading toward the West Coast.

Once on the road, the movie's comedy map couldn't be more obviously laid out. Wild Hogs includes lots of telegraphed humor, gay jokes and a dim-witted skinny-dipping scene.

Our heroes eventually encounter a group of grizzled bikers led by a sneering Ray Liotta. These hard-case guys view Travolta and company as pathetic wannabes. The plot builds toward an inevitable showdown.

Eventually, the movie tries to turn the men into heroes who stand up to the marauding bikers - with a little help from an unsurprising late-picture cameo.

Wild Hogs, the name these amateur bikers give to their four-man motorcycle club, wastes a ton of acting and comic talent on a script that really should have gone somewhere.