Gate-crashing the big time

At last, a film that allows us to see Vince Vaughn as a star in his own right - rather than everyone's favourite supporting actor. He is the main reason for seeing David Dobkin's overlong and uneven but often spitefully entertaining paean to two men of whom we ought thoroughly to disapprove.

He is partnered by Owen Wilson, a taste less easy to acquire than Vaughn, but who does pretty well in almost matching him here. They are best friends, lawyers who, when not rearranging the broken-down marriages of feuding couples, invite themselves to weddings to prey on the single women made unduly romantic by the proceedings.

Through sheer cheek and charm, they invariably succeed in bedding the best of them. But then they get caught in the other wedding trap - which is to fall in love themselves.

It's rather unexpected, particularly for Vaughn's character, Jeremy, who beds the spoiled daughter (Isla Fisher) of the snobbish and ghastly Treasury Secretary (Chris Walken); he tries to run away from her but is drawn back, intrigued by her sexual adventurousness.

As for John, played by Wilson, he is instantly hooked by the Secretary's other daughter (Rachel McAdams), engaged to the heir to a fortune.

It is a shame that what starts off as an engagingly frank dissection of the joys of single life ends up like just any other romantic comedy. Even Vaughn can't carry off the ridiculous final scene. But everything else is effortless for him, including the scene where his randy girlfriend feels him up under the Treasury Secretary's dinner table.

It's a funny scene which slowly reveals that, while Jeremy and John are chancers, the Secretary and his high-falutin' family are riven with strife and hypocrisy.

Despite its weaker moments, this is still more sophistication than most current American comedies and, with Vaughn at its centre, along with an excellent performance from Isla Fisher, zaps along merrily.

Wedding Crashers
Cert: 15