Give Vince Vaughn this: Four Christmases is leagues funnier than last year's Fred Claus. This also means it's preferable to tape-worm and has more laughs than an autopsy. Well, most autopsies.

And whereas Fred Claus left scars, you probably won't even remember seeing Four Christmases. Wise move: If you're not going to make a good movie, at least make a forgettable one. It's easier for everyone that way.

Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon -- both of whom apparently had a hand in tweaking the screenplay -- star as Brad and Kate, an unmarried upscale couple in San Francisco basking in their chic, no-strings lifestyle. They're so satisfied with themselves that each year they ditch their respective families in order to spend the holidays in some tropical getaway. Think about it: You can't spell "families" without "lies."

Trouble looms, though, when bad weather scuttles their planned flight to Fiji. Worse, they're filmed on the television news as one of the hundreds of stranded passengers. Spotted by both sets of divorced parents, they're grudgingly conscripted into visiting all family branches in a single day.

What follows is less a cohesive story than a series of scattershot, ill-structured episodes. Curiously, rather than build toward a comedic crescendo, the reverse occurs. Brad and Kate's first familial visit -- with his rowdy white-trash dad (Robert Duvall) and cage-wrestling brothers, Denver and Dallas (Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw) -- is, for all its crude cheerlessness, the movie's high point. Does praise get fainter?

Next on their must-see list is Kate's mother (Mary Steenburgen) and a household of randy women, most notably Kate's older married sister Courtney (Kristin Chenoweth). Presumably because the holidays just wouldn't be the same without them, there's also a potty-mouthed granny, a projectile-vomiting baby and a preacher (Dwight Yoakam) who cajoles Brad and Kate into taking the stage as Joseph and Mary at his church's Christmas pageant.

From there, it's on to Brad's hippie mom (Sissy Spacek) -- she has shacked up with his childhood best pal -- as well as an abrupt tonal lurch by the filmmakers. Suddenly this Christmas comedy with its gift exchanges and caterwauling brats morphs into a pre-wrapped rom-com.

By the time Brad and Kate arrive to visit her father (Jon Voight) they're in meltdown mode, questioning the depth of their commitment to each other and wallowing in each other's blunders. Really, they should have quit at two Christmases.

Of the movie's misaligned stars, it's Vaughn who emerges the least damaged. His Brad may be the umpteenth riff on Vaughn's overly familiar persona -- ferocious mouth, total self-absorption -- but it's a snugger fit to the sour material than Witherspoon's signature sunny self. All that's really required of her is to sit back and be puked on. Audiences will be only marginally better off.

(This film is rated PG)

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