GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST review by Gary Murray

Matthew McConaughey has always been an actor of great promise and little result. His stellar good looks have gotten him far in Hollywood, making him the wish of many women and the bane of many men. He has a promise of being a good solid performer, but his choice of projects seem to make him more of a butt of a joke than a major consideration as a actor. And in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past we get much more of the same.

Connor Mead (Matthew McConaughey) is a celebrity photographer with a bit of celebrity himself. He has a reputation for taking photos of lovely lasses in their laces. He also has a reputation for getting lovely lasses out of their laces. To show his devil may care attitude, he breaks up with three different girls on conference call while his young pop star conquest waits on the couch. He is a rogue and a cad who doesn't believe in love and marriage. Connor states that love is “magical comfort food.” He patters his life after his favorite uncle, the departed Wayne a guy who is such a legend that he invented the word MILF.

But, Connor has to go to the house of his youth for the wedding of his kid brother Paul. It is obvious that Paul is deeply in love and wanting to be married, a concept that Connor cannot grasp. The night of the rehearsal dinner, Connor makes a toast that offends just about every member of the wedding party. But all the bridesmaids still want to bed this stud.

Just after the incident at the dinner table, Connor is visited by the ghost of Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas). He tells Connor that the life he has chosen is not the right path and that true love is the only way to be happy in life. To prove the point, Connor will be visited by three different ghosts. And if anyone has ever read Dickens, we know where this all will end. The only thing missing in this little film is our Tiny Tim.

The first ghost is the Ghost of Girlfriends Past and most of the laughs come from looking back at the 1980's. Our ghost is the young 16 year-old who took teen Connor's virginity. With her thick curls and MTV dress, she is a adolescent hoot, with all the laughs coming both from the clothing and the remembrance of things past. We see where Connor takes the path do wn the dark side of never being hurt because he has been hurt as a child. We also see the relationship with Jenny (Jennifer Garner) the first girl he loved and the first girl who broke his heart. It has always been a struggle for our Connor in getting over both the hurt and the one who hurt him.



The Ghost of Girlfriends Present is Connor's only female that is a constant in his life, his personal assistant. We see how everyone looks at him today, which brings the first tears of sympathy. Once Connor sees how everyone else sees him, there begins the first pangs of doubt. And of course the Ghost of Girlfriends Future shows him how his life will end.
Someone pointed out to me that a romantic comedy is like a road trip. You know where you are going to end up, the joy is in the trip to the end. Even if you have never read the Dickens story this is based on, you can still see where everything is going in the world of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

Of the three major performers in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Michael Douglas does the best job. His cad Wayne is so much a product of the Old School of Male Excess that he could be the poster child for every Hugh Hefner 'wanna-be'. With his “Stabbin' Wagon”stud mobile, he is the prototypical Alpha Male. The way Michael Douglas delivers his lines shows that he knows his way around all the comedy as well as the tragic underpinning of the character.

Jennifer Garner is just lovely as the girl that got away, but she doesn't bring much to the role. It could have been played just the same by just about any actress working in Hollywood. I expected more from this stellar actress.

But this is the Matthew McConaughey show, and he performs exactly like you'd expect him to. With equal parts vibrato and moxie, he comes across as a testosterone swagging cave man. But, like in real life, his looks seem to make up for all his lack of personality.

Director Mark Waters does a decent job with both the actors and the story, but he never truly brings us much more than a basic tale told in a basic way. There are almost no surprises in any part of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. But he does a cracker jack job of capturing the magical elements of the screenplay and the second unit does a perfect job of capturing the magic aspects of the New England countryside.

While Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is in no way a great motion picture experience, but it is a fairly decent movie. There are enough laughs and emotional scenes to counter program the action fueled 'other film' that is to be released this week. While the boys will be at Wolverine, the girls will flock to Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. This is in every way shape and form a chick flick.

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