In Theaters: A Guitar Hero Commercial

Like an American version of Michael Apted's Up series, the thirteen-year collaboration between Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau has produced a revealing look at the different stages of becoming a Hollywood player. Their 1996 debut, Swingers, hummed with the restless energy of young wannabes ready for their close-up, and when Hollywood subsequently offered the duo all the perks and shortfalls of the spotlight, the newly cynical sensibility it engendered ran a corrosive streak through their 2001 reunion, Made. The two men have seen their careers dip and stage a mighty comeback in the years since, and in their latest collaboration, the island comedy A Guitar Hero Commercial, we get an unpretty look at the fatty nonchalance of a newly minted Hollywood A-lister.

A Guitar Hero Commercial follows four couples with relationship drama: Vaughn and his wife (the eternally miscast Malin Akerman) are overworked because Vaughn is too preoccupied with his job pushing Guitar Hero, while Favreau and wife Kristin Davis have wandering eyes that are very ambiguously defined. Both are friends with Faizon Love, who's left his wife for a younger model (Kali Hawk), and all three couples are shanghaied into an island getaway devoted to couples counseling by Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell, whose brittle relationship is threatened by her inability to conceive.

Though written by Favreau and Vaughn (with Dana Fox) and earmarked for Favreau to direct, the gig ended up going to his longtime producing partner Peter Billingsley, and that's the film's first major mistake. It isn't that Billingsley is a merely serviceable director -- though he is -- it's that he isn't objective enough to really push Vaughn or Favreau to do anything of note. In worse films, Vaughn has at least been an improvisational loose cannon; here, it feels like he split after two takes to go jet-skiing. The island setting looks beautiful, and I have no doubt the actors enjoyed themselves, but none of their fun is evident in the tepid final product. When you're shooting in paradise with a crony in the director's chair, why stay up late slaving over better punchlines?

The entire enterprise climaxes when Vaughn and a rival end up challenging each other to an extended Guitar Hero duel; the lazy, minutes-long sequence offers no jokes, no subversion, and no attempt to mask the fact this is exactly what the title implies, A Guitar Hero Commercial. Not only is it less fun than watching someone play a video game in real life, it isn't even as much fun as watching Vaughn play 16-bit ice hockey in Swingers. The only moment of unintended irony comes when a cheering Favreau calls out for Vaughn to use "Star Power!" They have it. They've earned it. But they're not scoring any points with it here.