Big brother Fred, the Claus with the flaws **

Ho, ho . . . whoa! It's the Christmas Crashers!

Fred Claus announces himself like a lumbering Elf looking for loopholes in The Santa Clause. Vince Vaughn plays Fred, Santa's big, bitter brother, a repo man who puts the crime in Christmas.

Fred's been stewing for years because Mom (Kathy Bates) wants him to be more like Nicholas (Paul Giamatti, better known as St. Nicholas Claus), that smiley-face with the giving fetish.

While his cheery bro runs the family business up at the North Pole, Fred's in the taking business: The glowering Chicago repo man keeps the loot he repossesses and lies to his girlfriend (Rachel Weisz), and himself.

A sporadically funny tale of sibling rivalry in which the best jokes Frisbee over the heads of the under-12 set, Fred Claus reunites Wedding Crasher Vaughn with director David Dobkin.

That bigmouth, motormouth, smashmouth Vaughn is reliably funny and inimitably irritable, tearing through dialogue like an all-terrain vehicle in high gear. Whether talking his way out of jail or teaching an elf how to boogie on the dance floor, Vaughn fires on all cylinders. Too bad the movie he's in keeps on stalling.

Freely mixing reality therapy, fairy tale and satire, Dobkin's film does not maintain a consistent tone. Is it a seriocomedy about brothers who need to work on unfinished business? Is it a holiday fable about a Scrooge who comes to surf the yuletide? Is it a satire in which an efficiency expert (Kevin Spacey) puts pressure on St. Nick to outsource gift allocation and distribution?

In Dobkin's hands, it's all of these for about five minutes until the next tonal change.

Fred Claus ** (out of four stars)

Directed by David Dobkin. Written by Dan Fogelman. With Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, Rachel Weisz and Kathy Bates. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 56 mins.

Parent's guide: PG (mild profanity, rude humor)

Playing at: area theaters