Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (**½)

Directed by: Mark Waters
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Michael Douglas, Emma Stone, Breckin Meyer, Lacey Chabert, Robert Forster, Anne Archer
Seen: June 15th 2009

**½ Out of ****

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is a romantic comedy for the first half of its overly long running time, and a bit of a convoluted drama for the rest of it. Connor Mead (McConaughey) is the worst kind of human being, not willing to commit to any of his multiple relationships to such a spectacular degree that he sees nothing wrong with breaking up with three women on one conference call while telling the fourth (in his office) that he did it for her (and she believes him).

What is refreshing about the film is that it doesn’t strictly follow the usual romantic comedy recipe. In the usual romantic comedy the story is usually a Disney variety story about two people who beautifully meet and dizzily fall for each other, then gets confronted with some lie about something like an immoral bet, and then someone fixes it, either the guy or the girl (usually the guy did something wrong to jeopardize everything), giving everyone a teary and beautiful ending.

Ghosts follows a slightly different narrative, with the guy in this story being a jackass from the start out, going through a big personal change during the course of the film as he is visited by four ghosts. The first is his dead uncle, Wayne (Douglas), who was a legendary player as Connor grew up without his parents, and the one who taught him in his womanising ways. His uncle is singing a different tune now, trying to convince Connor of his wrong ways, but Connor still thinks his uncle is a legend as the second ghost, Allison Vandermeersch (Stone) takes him through memories of his past girlfriends and how he crushed hearts wherever he ever went, most notably that of Jenny Perotti (Garner), his first (and all-time greatest) girlfriend.

His second ghost takes him through girlfriends present, or rather all of his present relationships, and how he affects people around him (read: ruins their lives). His third ghost shows him a ghost of a girlfriend in his future, as well as the ghost of another big relationship in his future, and he does not like what he sees at all.

McConaughey does what he can by now do with his eyes closed (by way of acting, that is), but in this film he does his two of his usual characters in one. The film starts out with the creepy/sleazy guy we saw in Two for the Money, and he eventually converts into the guy we saw in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Failure to Launch. Jennifer Garner’s Jenny is a great girl who does not take crap from anyone, and is very well-spoken in any situation. The fringe characters are all believable enough to make you follow the film through both its quirky comedy and its somewhat laborious drama (which doesn’t completely detract from the main story), and by the end you do feel a sense of accomplishment with the characters. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past then, is not a bad film at all, but you also won’t remember it for long...