See It or Skip It: 'Ghosts of Girlfriends Past'

You know what sucks?

All of Matthew McConaughey’s movie choices recently.

And his latest project, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, does nothing to reverse the trend.

McConaughey stars as Connor Mead, a celebrity photographer so talented he only needs to take one photo for the job to be done. A notorious womanizer, he manages to dump a gaggle of girls over iChat while his latest conquest looks on and, despite his reprehensible behavior, she’s still desperate to sleep with him immediately after witnessing his cold, calculated chauvinism.

Speaking of desperate, that’s what all the women in this movie are: sad, frantic, mindless sheep who are wooed with a wink and a smile, have no problem with a stranger fondling their breasts at a bar and think sloppy sexual seconds amongst friends is not only acceptable but utterly intoxicating.

Say what?

Have the writers, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, ever met a woman?

The film is grotesquely over the top, allowing Connor to spout every cliché imaginable and expect the audience to want to go along for the ride. What director Mark Waters failed to recognize is McConaughey’s shtick wore thin around How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.  Watching his reheated performance from The Wedding Planner, Failure to Launch and Fool’s Gold is arduous, exhausting viewing.

Connor is rude, offensive and unlikeable. With blazingly zoom whitened teeth and greased hair, McConaughey looks more like a man who might produce porn rather than the movie star we all swooned over in A Time to Kill.

The film follows the construct of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but instead of Christmas, Connor is attending the wedding of his brother, Breckin Meyer in a thankless, obligatory filler role, to the ultimate Bridezilla, Lacey Chabert whose portrayal of a woman on the brink slips into maudlin camp.

Michael Douglas breezes in as Connor’s Robert Evans-ish uncle who recites passages from The Game verbatim, and warns him he will be visited by the ghosts of girlfriends past, present and future. The highlight of the film comes in the form of girlfriends past, Emma Stone as an acid-washed, brace-faced vixen who claimed Connor’s virginity.

But Stone’s time is brief.

Jennifer Garner’s turn as Jenny, Connor’s childhood sweetheart, the one woman who’s ever owned his heart, is also miscalculated. Garner is adorable and charismatic but the idea of her falling for someone as unredeemably soulless and callow as Connor is a hard swallow. Even after his ghostly visitations. Of course Connor has moments of redemption but McConaughey, once gleaming with potential, has lost the sparkle that made him a star.

The film, like McConaughey, utterly lacks charm or levity. For something attempting to be a romantic comedy, it is decidedly unromantic and unfunny. 

Skip it.

—Sasha Perl-Raver