In Catch Me If You Can, about a teen-age con-man who passes hundreds, maybe thousands of bad checks around the world, Leonardo DiCaprio and Steven Spielberg put on a happy face after the gloom of Gangs of New York for DiCaprio and A.I. and Minority Report for Spielberg.

Playing Frank Abagnale Jr. with an offhand authority, DiCaprio recaptures the spontaneous grace and emotionality of his juvenile performances in This Boy's Life and What's Eating Gilbert Grape. The role of a cocksure boy becoming a suave man in the forefront of the 1960s "jet set" releases this elusive star from politically correct or historical constraints. Only in his coruscating cameo in Woody Allen's Celebrity has DiCaprio registered this strongly as a pleasure-seeker - and here he's a pleasure-giver, too. Abagnale poses as a lawyer, a doctor, and more often a pilot while "hanging paper" (kiting checks) at airports, banks and international hotels. DiCaprio brings a partying spirit to a man who plays masquerades for keeps.

Credit Spielberg's love of moviemaking for DiCaprio's good mood. But Spielberg is also responsible for anchoring the comedy in dual father-and-son relationships that weigh down this lark with unearned sentiment and level the high-jinks to, say, medium-jinks. DiCaprio finally has his star vehicle, but the star director doesn't hit his marks. Spielberg doesn't build intrigue and suspense with the mechanics of Abagnale's scams. The bulk of the film concentrates on Abagnale's gifts for flirtation and mimicry. Because he gets his ideas of how doctors and lawyers act from television, you're amazed when he divulges real substance and intellect at the end. DiCaprio brings an intelligent actor's analytic distance to his charm-boat role. Spielberg gets all balled up in examining the notion that a brilliant come-on alone can net millions.

Spielberg has said that his own youthful bouts of let's-pretend - saying he had a job at Universal Pictures and talking his way onto the lot - helped fuel his interest in Abagnale's exploits. Once he discovered that Abagnale's parents, like his own, had divorced, the director's emotional involvement deepened. Paradoxically, that parallel doesn't benefit the movie.

Spielberg forces the broken-family aspect of the plot. (In E.T., of course, it was organic.) The director portrays Frank Abagnale Sr. (Christopher Walken), a World War II veteran, stationery-store owner and civic booster, and his French wife, Paula (Nathalie Baye), as the height of domestic romance. Walken's idiosyncratic aura has never been more poignant; the movie peaks when he and Baye swing and sway before a Christmas tree to "Embraceable You." But Frank Sr. is a minor con-artist himself, a bad example to his son, in trouble with the IRS and unable to raise a loan to keep his store. And Paula is a fair-weather wife who beds a well-off friend before she files for divorce.

The way Spielberg shapes the story, their breakup propels Frank Jr. into a life of lucrative crime. The director undercuts the amusement of a young man selling the glamour of a pilot's uniform and surrounding himself with "girls, girls, girls" whenever the hero pines for the household bliss of his youthful dreams. Posing as a doctor, Frank Jr. both uses and woos a candy striper (the charming Amy Adams) and promises to mend her relationship with her parents (Martin Sheen and Nancy Lenehan). But before long, to our astonishment, they're engaged and seriously in love, treasuring the weekly hour when the family gathers round the tube to sing along with Mitch Miller.

Of course, this living-room romanticism can't last - not with FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) in hot pursuit. Given the movie's slack pace, Hanks' monotonous acting and the screenplay's drive to transform Hanratty into Abagnale's surrogate father, make that pursuit "lukewarm." Hanks virtually recapitulates Dan Aykroyd's Joe Friday from the 1987 Dragnet film (in which Hanks played Friday's partner), and he doesn't do nearly as ticklish a job of portraying an obsessed lawman.

Still, this may be the performance Spielberg dragged out of him. Consciously or un-, Spielberg wants to exploit and subvert every item on this movie's cultural smorgasbord, from Bond-era hedonism and sitcom family values to the old-fashioned authority of law-and-order figures like Hanratty, who sacrifices everything for his job, including a personality. Even the sex gags based on Abagnale's ability to overpower credulous women in responsible jobs are almost double-edged.

Too bad this great-impostor story isn't the right vehicle for semi-feeling satire. Only John Williams' jazzy score strikes just the right tone for volatile comedy-drama. Spielberg's inchoate attempts at cultural observation stretch the movie out and dilute the giddiness instead of adding a pleasurable spike. When the movie doesn't feel inflated, it feels soggy.

Sun Score: ** 1/2

Catch Me If You Can

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Released by DreamWorks

Rated PG-13

Time 140 minutes