WEDDING CRASHERS

RATING:

Starring: Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams, Christopher Walken, Will Ferrell, Isla Fisher, Jane Seymour.

Rated R - for sexual content/nudity and language.

Something curious happened to Vince Vaughn's career. It never took off. After the glory of "Swingers," it looked all but certain that he would be the next big thing. He nabbed a role in a Spielberg film. He scored a meaty, dramatic leading-man role in a dark horse Oscar candidate. The future looked bright.

As fate would have it, though, the Spielberg flick was "The Lost World." As for the Oscar candidate? We never so much as blinked at "Return to Paradise," which was, in fairness, a competently made drama. Then came the clunkers like "Clay Pigeons." Then came the debacle of "Psycho." It took "Old School" to make us remember him again.

At last, with "The Wedding Crashers," Vaughn shines with the second-best performance of his uneven career, bringing his A-game for the first time since "Swingers." .

Sporting a receding hairline and the wiff of old-man-sleaziness, Vaughn teams with Owen Wilson to deliver a comedy that's as funny as it is wrong.

Think of Vaughn's character, Jeremy, as the guy from "Swingers" after he's aged seven years. But he can't grow up. He still chases skirts. And his "rules" and womanizing have a mesmerizing quality of the pathetic.

The premise is simple enough: along with reluctant accomplice John (Wilson), Jeremy bluffs his way into weddings, charms complete strangers, and scoops up the drunken bridesmaids.

In lesser hands, this Saturday Night Live-sounding premise would only last for ten minutes of so-so humor. Amazingly, director David Dobkin ("Shanghai Knights" and [gulp] "Clay Pigeons") and writers Steve Faber and Bob Fisher exploit the concept for all it's worth.

Forget the actual seductions. There's joy in watching Vaughn pretend to be the "balloon man" for a group of children at the wedding, buddying up with each kid and hoping the ladies notice. He helps the bride and groom cut the wedding cake, shoveling frosting in his mouth with drunken gusto. It's comic gold.

Unfortunately, there's a plot. And that's where the film loses steam. Predictably, John falls in love with one of the bridesmaids (Rachel McAdams, from "Mean Girls" and "The Notebook"), forcing him to rethink his deceitful playboy ways.

As a complicating (but not very interesting) factor, the bridesmaid is the daughter of the intimidating Secretary of Treasury (a sleepwalking Christopher Walken), requiring John to present himself as a wealthy, cultured, venture capitalist socialite.

The momentum sputters and the scenes lag, but the chemistry between Vaughn and Wilson is enough to stave off boredom. When Vaughn, sipping whiskey, gives a profanity-laced confession to a bewildered priest--and then ends the conversation by kissing him on the mouth--even the formulaic story arc is redeemed.

"Wedding Crashers" lacks the heart, and the multi-layered depth, for that matter, of "Swingers." No comparison. But for sheer comic bravado, you can't ask for more in a popcorn knee-slapper.

Agree? Disagree? E-mail me at jeff@latinoreview.com.