1/2

This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

You know you’re not expecting much from a movie when you and your fellow critics are taking bets beforehand on how many minutes into the film Matthew McConaughey will remove his shirt. It’s good to know there’s still a surprise or two around the bend these days. As far as the mightily abused McConaughey romantic comedies go, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is actually one of his better outings. In most circles, that’s not saying much, but if you’ve seen Fools Gold or Failure to Launch you know it at least counts for something.

Though his character goes by the name Connor Mead, Matthew McConaughey is basically playing himself here. Or at least the naked, bongo drum-pounding self he used to be before he settled down and decided to start a family. Both phases of the actor’s real life inform his onscreen life. McConaughey is fashion photographer Connor Mead, a name spoken with almost reverent awe by the women he’s bedded and the men who venerate him. A committed bachelor, Connor is a man for whom marriage is a vice and casual sex life’s one redeeming virtue. Everything Connor has become he learned at the knee of the master, his late lothario Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas, who steals all the scenes he’s in).

Connor’s brother (Breckin Meyer) couldn’t be more different. He is marrying the woman of his dreams (Lacey Chabert), no matter how many times Connor tries to talk him out of it. Connor is so anti-marriage, in fact, that his presence at the big event is souring the mood of the entire wedding party, including his childhood friend Jenny (Jennifer Garner) who loved him once—still does—but cannot abide what he’s become. Connor’s wake-up call comes in the form of the repentant ghost of Uncle Wayne, who dispenses three spirits, jilted girlfriends Connor loved and left. As the spirits take Connor on a revealing tour through his life’s history of sabotaged relationships, he begins to see the error of his ways and the means to make things right with Jenny, the love of his life.

The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is a nice spin on the familiar Christmas Carol story. The film is consistently amusing if not always laugh-out-loud funny. That said, one self-aware line about the use of movie montages, brought the house down. With a bit more crassness than you might be used to seeing in a romcom of this nature and some ho-hum writing that occasionally swerves into edgy insight, Ghosts starts out cheesily enough (we laugh at Connor more than we laugh with him) but finds its stride in the latter acts. Much of this credit has to go to Garner—both her charm and her indubitable waterworks. While McConaughey overacts his way through scene after scene, she provides just the grounding and warmth the film needs to succeed.

Connor starts out as a scoundrel and a rogue—a role McConaughey could play in his sleep—and ends a little bit older and a little bit wiser. Let’s hope, for his sake, that life will imitate art and the serious films (gasp!) the eternal playboy has lined up for next year will actually remind us all why we fell in love with him in the first place.

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.