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Movie review: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
BY MAGGIE SCOTT
Photographer Connor Mead has been a swine to women ever since his teenage heart got broken by Jenny Perotti in seventh grade; and he’s going to have a dickens of a time changing his bah humbug attitude about love unless he gets visited by the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.
It’s the eve of his little brother’s wedding in Newport; and amid the scent of lavender and white roses there is a glow of good feelings for the happy couple—until Connor (Matthew McConaughey) arrives, pumped from a three-way dump by conference call of women who thought he cared, and primed to put down the institution of marriage as something that should have been abolished years ago.
Among the bridesmaids, all but one of whom have been more than friendly in the past with Connor, is Jenny (Jennifer Garner), who is giving him the eye for much less cuddly reasons. She informs Connor that if he doesn’t get in the spirit of the proceedings she will be more than happy to deprive him of his “favorite appendage.”
Since the bridesmaids are off-limits, he retreats to the men’s room, where he can’t believe his eyes: his deceased Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas) relieving himself at one of the urinals. The old roué has jovial words of warning for Connor: “Don’t ruin your life like I did.”
Connor wants to believe it’s the booze talking, but he has to take this seriously. When his folks died in a car crash, Uncle Wayne became his mentor—particularly when it came to the opposite sex. But, how could this player, who did what he wanted with whomever he wanted, have regrets so deep he would come back from the dead to show Connor the error of his ways?
Three ghosts are on their way to guide him through the moments that shaped Connor into the heedless hedonist and lonely lout he is. Their portal into Connor’s world is the king-sized, fur throw-covered bed in his guest room.
The first guide is Allison (Emma Stone), the giggly, gum-popping sixteen-year-old who was Connor’s first conquest and all of a 39-minute relationship. Allison guides Connor through such life-altering moments as Jenny’s rejection of him at a party in favor of an eighth grader who wants to make out and Uncle Wayne’s coaching at a local bar on how to handle women (“Feelings kill your game; power lies in whoever cares less”).
The ghosts of Present and Future have equally juicy scenes to jumpstart Connor’s conscience. Eventually, after he’s watched himself break Jenny’s heart, ruin his brother’s wedding, and seen his own graveside service with no mourners but his lonely, aged and single brother (Breckin Meyer) in attendance, Connor wakes with a new attitude: “I’m alive! I haven’t missed it!”
Asking one of the wedding party’s kids if it’s Christmas, he’s informed, “No, it’s Saturday, you moron.” Unfortunately, the bride is on her way to the airport, after discovering that Paul once slept with one of her bridesmaids. It’s up to Connor to put things right and prove that the things the ghosts showed him were things as they could be, not as they will be.
This leopard-changing-its spots adaptation from writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore dishonors the Dickens’ Christmas Carol masterpiece with its drearily unfunny surfeit of crude humor at the expense of genuine humanity. With murky cinematography and cheapskate set decoration that makes all the wedding flowers look fake, this is a miserable nice-try from director Mark Waters (Four Christmases) that should have died on the cutting room floor and decreased the surplus population of dreadful movies.
A Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema release, rated PG-13 for sexual content, language and a drug reference.
