No one escapes criticism for this catastrophe. Where is everyone living, Never Never Land? Where is Peter Pan? More bewildering than that is everyone around him, including the love of his life Jenny (who incidentally knows his track record), are going to believe that this miraculous transformation has actually occurred. Oh yeah, and then to add insult to injury, we’re supposed to believe that in the course of a single night, when life and limb are not at stake and there is no real vested interest, a man who has spent his entire life dominating women is suddenly going to stop. Taking it a notch further, so as to not make it look like only guys are promiscuous dirtballs, the bridesmaids are all horny, homewrecking whores too (I hear they make great company if you can find them in real life though). How or why a woman would fall over herself to be used as a piece of meat is beyond me and watching it isn’t exactly something I call entertainment (I too, believe it or not, have boundaries). The words and actions highlighted by Mead are, even from a guy’s perspective, downright dirty. Not only doesn’t Ghosts of Girlfriends Past have much originality to it (yes, Mead does an about face and becomes the perfect gentleman), it also suffers from being, for lack of a better word, crude. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how it will all end, but it would have been helpful to have one on hand to figure out how to abort the takeoff. It’s here on the eve of the wedding, after making a mockery of the whole institution, that the ghost of his uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas) shows up to tell him that he’ll be visited by three ghosts who will show him the error of his ways. And wouldn’t you know it, years later at the wedding of his brother Paul (Breckin Meyer), she shows up. All because, it turns out, that he bares scars from his first girlfriend Jenny Perotti (Jennifer Garner). McConaughey is Connor Mead, a brazen womanizing douchebag who believes women are put on this Earth for his sole pleasure and satisfaction - they are his conquest and once he’s finished, he summarily dispatches them to netherworld. In a sentence, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is the epitome of all that is bad with Hollywood now. The bottom of the barrel is scraped by stealing the plot devices of A Christmas Carol to tell the story.Matthew McConaughey is once again chalked up to be the leading man.English, French audio and subtitles.Can the romantic comedy genre be out of steam? To me, it sure seems that way when: The best gag comes at the tail end of the closing credits and has nothing to do with anything. Most of the laughs come from Emma Stone, who plays the spirit guide to girlfriends past as a rambunctious 16-year-old. It’s a perfect use of the moral decay that clings to Douglas in every role. Michael Douglas plays the Marley’s ghost role as a Rat Pack swinger teaching the young Connor how to pick up girls. He plays Connor Mead, a hugely successful stud who shows up at his brother’s country-house wedding, offends everyone and has the instructive but not very funny dreams. Matthew McConaughey is too convincing as the heartless womanizer for us to believe that Jennifer Garner – who has little flair for comedy but does radiate clear-eyed intelligence – would ever pine for him. Trouble is, they left out most of the comedy, and the romance doesn’t work. What’s great about Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is that you can swipe the structure and fill it with any moral point you want via comic or horrific exaggeration, so it must have seemed a good idea for a romantic comedy. GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST (Alliance, 2009) D: Mark Waters, w/ Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner.
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