After the surprising success of "Swingers," writer-actor Jon Favreau waited five years to put his next screenplay "Made" on the big screen. Whether or not he is a superstitious man, Favreau's writing and direction on this film indicates strongly that he has fallen victim to the proverbial "sophomore slump."

"Made," with its slipshod plot and atrocious dialogue, lacks the hip attitude and raw energy that catalyzed "Swingers." If this film is a comedy, it provides nothing to laugh at. If this film is a drama, it lacks any character depth or real conflict. Most likely, its greatest offense was that it left the audience wondering what genre it was even aiming for.

Favreau portrays Bobby, a construction worker by day and a fledgling boxer by night. Ricky (Vince Vaughn) is a shiftless layabout whose mouth is always yapping. Bobby works for Max (Peter Falk), a mob underling who is content with being nothing more than a glorified pimp. Max offers Bobby and Ricky a chance to escape their meaningless construction jobs and operate some important money laundering schemes in New York. For Bobby, this is his opportunity to quickly earn serious cash, in hopes that he can convince his girlfriend, Jessica (Famke Janssen, "X-Men"), to emancipate herself from stripping, which she does to support her daughter. Ricky and Bobby go to New York for a meeting with Tom and Ruiz (Sean Combs), a drug dealer and his middleman.

Boxing is a metaphor for Bobby's existence. His mediocrity inside the ring parallels his unfulfilled life. This becomes more apparent when Bobby is forced to deal with the blows of jealousy, impatience and unrequited love. Ricky, in turn, is complicating situations for Bobby by not following the guidelines set up at the New York meeting.

To Vaughn's credit, he knows how to portray machismo. Now if he would only learn how to portray some realistic feelings, for this film is thirsting for true emotionality.

However, it is unfair to single out Vaughn for his one-dimensional performance; all the characters in this film reflect Favreau's inability to write dynamic characterizations. Each actor stumbles through his role, repeating the scripted lines without really interpreting them. There is one exception: Sean Combs is surprisingly brilliant in his minor but significant role.

As it is when he's in the ring, when Bobby "defeats" each conflict in his life, his opponent only grows stronger. In the end, "Made" wants to stress that his biggest fight was in essence an altruistic, not individualistic, match. Unfortunately, the movie committed little of its duration to setting up this last conflict, and it wheezes to its conclusion.

Since "Made" spent little of its energy addressing this last conflict, it seemed to overcompensate by making the dialogue unrepeatable. Few things are worse than watching a terribly scripted movie delve into a chasm of f-words in a callow attempt to assert its hipness. The film quickly desensitizes its viewer to the foul language, at which time each usage became annoying instead of invigorating.

It makes sense in an absurd kind-of-way that a movie entitled "Made" would take no steps to portray any character being "made" (or at least the way an audience would understand it on "Sopranos"). Perhaps Favreau was insinuating that his character is "made" by his life-affirming decisions. Unfortunately, this point exists in a muddle of bad characterizations and a second-rate plot while consequently getting misplaced amidst the hundreds of f-words that spew out of Vaughn's mouth.

After "Made," Jon Favreau has a lot of work to do to convince even his most loyal minions that "Swingers" was more than an artistic fluke. --Two shamrocks (out of five)

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