Ed Burns is often the best thing about his movies, and their downfall. His films, almost all of which feature him as the main character, shine the spotlight on him so clearly that the other characters are forced into two-dimensional stereotype, only to reflect their woodenness on him.

The low budget “Brothers McMullen,” Mr. Burns’s 1995 debut as a writer/director/star, proved he had the potential to bloom into a leading raconteur of Americana. But until now, increased budgets have not relieved his films of the stilted narration that plagued his first full-length feature.

In “The Groomsmen,” Mr. Burns has finally found a story worth telling and a cast capable of bringing it to life. The film documents the lead-up to the wedding of Paulie (Mr. Burns) and Sue (Brittany. Murphy). Living together for the past few years in Paulie’s hometown on Long Island, they chose to marry when Sue discovered she was pregnant. As Paulie’s best friends from high school gather in their hometown to celebrate his nuptials, he continues to grapple with lingering doubts about his relationship and capabilities as a father.

The story may not be outsized, but that is part of its charm. And packaged together with the individual trials of his friends, it achieves something that his other films have lacked: believability.

From “Brothers McMullen” to 2001’s “Sidewalks of New York,” Mr. Burns has prided himself on telling New York tales with undertones of Catholicism and working-class realism. His films are fraught with meaningful treatises on life, love, and religion. More often than not, the speeches and scenes he has created talk of these ideals without showing their import. And his quirky anecdotes and seemingly ad-libbed dialogue have a tendency toward stilted awkwardness.

But in “The Groomsmen,” Mr. Burns has finally gotten his formula right. Like so many of his films, the action focuses on male relationships, with the women in their lives consigned to the background. But the characters here seem less focused on impressing each other than working out their own issues. And the setting of a wedding weekend puts the intense male bonding in perspective. Paulie’s pending nuptials have brought his friends together and moved them all to consider their own predicaments.

Mr. Burns’s films have always made a case for New York’s outer boroughs, and “The Groomsmen” silently argues for the outer edges of Manhattan, with its lush gardens, beachscapes, and beautiful, spacious homes.

His earned cinematic credibility allows for the improved vistas and imagery, as well as superior casting. But bigger names didn’t help 1996’s “She’s the One” or “Sidewalks.”It is wise choices (and a departure from casting his real-life love interest to play opposite him) that make the dynamic work here.

Mr. Burns gets some superior work out of Ms. Murphy as his fiancée Sue (also helping her shed some of the jittery quirks that often mar her performances), whose limited screen time manages to convey a bond that seems worth fighting for.

But the majority of the plot is devoted to his friends, and Mr. Burns has cast a well-known crew of actors who hold their own while maintaining excellent chemistry as a group.

While Paulie’s brother Jimbo, played by Donal Logue, toys with feelings of inadequacy as he measures himself against his younger, more successful brother, his friends T.C. (John Leguizamo) and Mikey (a mildly stunted but endearing Jay Mohr) deal with the distances of their adult lives from where they had pictured themselves. Des (Matthew Lillard) may be obsessed with regrouping their high school band at the wedding, but he retains the heart of the group.

A local bar owner who married his high school sweetheart at 21, Des also represents something not often found in film these days: a contented 30-something male. Having given up his dreams of rock stardom, he is the father of two adolescent boys and a devoted husband. He may be a bit too sage for belief, but many of his witticisms ring true. When Paulie asks him one night how he handles being a father, Des says point blank that you lose any hope of having free time. But he goes on, “What’s free time? … At the end of the night, if I couldn’t check on my little boy, my life would be empty.”

It’s moments like this, which convey a sense of hometown, familial pride, that attain the level of legitimacy Mr. Burns has long been striving for.

Mr. Burns has grown in the decade since his debut feature, and “The Groomsmen” is similarly matured. Issues of fidelity, love, and the vestiges of Catholicism in modern life are still there, but the action is wisely limited to events that transpire in one weekend. With this smaller focus, the film can more accurately depict some of the reckoning and introspection that occur in the lead-up to a wedding. And the precise portrayals and humor that craft the film follow through to the closing scene beneath the credits.

“The Groomsmen” is surely helped along by the budget growth that a good reputation can afford a director. But more importantly, Mr. Burns has the heart of his film in the right place.

mkeane@nysun.com