"Wedding Crashers"

"Wedding Crashers" hooks you in its first 20 minutes. Dobkin (who previously directed the black comedy "Clay Pigeons," as well as the absurdly delightful "Shanghai Knights") doesn't make the mistake of trying to ease us into comedy mode; he pitches us into it head-first, which is a lot more fun. He makes the most of Vaughn and Wilson's web-slinging dialogue. Their dueling taunts -- "Oh, please don't take a turn to Negative Town!" is met with "Grow up, Peter Pan! Count Chocula!" -- take on a kind of contrapuntal schoolyard rhythm.

Even beyond that, though, Dobkin clues us in early on that John and Jeremy don't crash weddings just for the babes. We see them march into a Jewish wedding, jaunty in their yarmulkes, or cutting the rug with a bunch of rowdy Irishmen. They have much more fun at these alleged celebrations than most of the folks who have actually been invited, taking obvious pleasure in their instantaneous ability to fit in. They're wildly canny, too: Jeremy makes balloon animals for the kiddies, always making sure the most attractive single women are near enough to notice what a way he has with the little squirts. John dances with ancient dames and awkward 7-year-old flower girls alike. And both yuk it up with the old-timers as if they were secretly -- or, more likely, sincerely -- having a blast.

It doesn't hurt that both Vaughn and Wilson are extremely charismatic actors, albeit in completely opposite ways. Wilson, the drawling Don Juan, wears his easy charm like a broken-in suede jacket. He's seductively naughty, surreptitiously dripping Visine into his eyes so a comely cutie will think that a couple of total strangers' vows have moved him to tears. Vaughn is a trickier case, and he's also Wilson's perfect foil. While Wilson keeps everything loose, with Vaughn, the gags are locked up tight and parceled out in little paranoid bursts.

Vaughn isn't the kind of comic actor you immediately and comfortably give yourself over to: He gets laughs by keeping us a little tense -- there's something about him that makes us wonder if he's going to blow at any minute. He has complete control of his material here, and his performance has a nervy, percolating energy. He knows how to use his sheer stature as part of the joke: Clasping a petite conquest on the dance floor, he murmurs, "I feel so tiny in your arms," and his deadpan audacity is so big it practically explodes the confines of the screen.

I know lots of moviegoers who have turned against Hollywood "product," for reasons that are, sadly, perfectly justifiable. I also know other moviegoers (and, unfortunately, plenty of critics) who believe Hollywood movies should be graded on the curve: We shouldn't scrutinize them too carefully or be so ridiculous as to expect them to be remotely intelligent or capable of subtlety. But I think "Wedding Crashers" -- whatever its flaws may be -- should at least makes us define what we mean when we talk about Hollywood product.

The picture is highly commercial in the sense that it will play at the local multiplex, and lots of people are likely to flock to it in its first weekend, at least: It's the kind of picture you want to see with a bunch of people on a Friday night, to be part of a crowd of individuals who will all laugh at the same silly things. But unlike so many other recent (or upcoming) Hollywood products, it was made from an original screenplay (Faber and Fisher previously wrote for TV sitcoms); it didn't come from a source that audiences are already familiar with, like an old television show or a previous movie. "Wedding Crashers" may be the most optimistic Hollywood comedy of the year, because it restores at least some dim hope that directors, writers and actors with actual brains in their heads can somehow triumph over unimaginative studio execs. In that way, "Wedding Crashers" isn't just the life of the party, but its pulse.

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