Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

In "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past," Matthew McConaughey plays Connor Mead, a high fashion photographer who is the embodiment of sleaze.

After five minutes in his company, you want to dress your eyeballs in condoms.

Sample seduction scene: Girl (pop star fresh from photo shoot, curvy, comely, maybe 18, on top of Connor): "Why am I doing this?" Connor (three shades too tan): "Well it usually has something to do with your father." Girl: "I've never even met my father." Connor: "Well, come to Papa."

Does it get any grosser? I mean, hotter?

Problematically, this is a romantic comedy, set at the wedding of Connor's younger brother Paul (Breckin Meyer). This means that somehow, after watching the odious Connor break up with three women simultaneously on a conference call, we are supposed to stomach the notion that his destiny is to end up with prettiest, nicest bridesmaid, Jenny (played by the luminous Jennifer Garner).

He and Jenny grew up together in Newport, R.I., an orphan and his gal pal scampering around a big mansion much like young Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes, only instead of Alfred the butler, Connor had his Uncle Wayne the sex addict, played by Michael Douglas. (Imagine George Hamilton crossed with Hugh Hefner. But creepier.) As they grew to be teens, and Connor was schooled in the way of scoundrels by his uncle, he and Jenny drifted apart. They reunited in their 20s, had one night of magic, and then Connor never called her again.

But it's not because he just wasn't that into her. It's because he was too into her, too afraid of being powerless and lost in a relationship. This drove him from bed to bed in an endless circle of cad-dom. The only way for that tragic cycle to be broken is for the ghost of Uncle Wayne to send Connor on a tour of his life, in the manner of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." The ghost of girlfriend's past is a red-haired girl, Allison (Emma Stone), who deflowered a teen-aged Connor. The tour of girlfriends present is handled by Connor's put-upon personal assistant Melanie (Noureen DeWulf, woefully stereotyped, but funny). The fact that Melanie is not actually dead is a remarkably novel approach to ghost casting. (Somewhere, Dickens is whacking his head and saying, "So I could have made Tiny Tim the Ghost of Christmas Present?") The last ghost is a stunning, silent blonde who seems to have wandered in from a Summer's Eve commercial.

On the upside, the movie has a sense of humor about itself. During the tour of girlfriends past, Allison announces, "Now we're going to watch a romantic montage of you and Jenny set to Cyndi Lauper's 'Time after Time.'" A bolder movie would have let the joke speak for itself, but "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" is too fundamentally formulaic to actually skip the montage.

It's also hampered by the fact that McConaughey is more believable as skanky playboy than the singer of any true redemption song. My own bias against Connor led to a direct correlation between how often/well the rest of the cast insulted Connor and how much I liked them. Lacey Chabert, as Sandra, the Bridezilla who is about to become his sister-in-law, won my heart when she called him "bitch." Ditto for Robert Forster, playing Sandra's stiff, Korean War vet father, who consistently refers to him as Paco. As the mother of the bride, Anne Archer, whose breasts were cast in roughly the same role Jane Seymour's were in "Wedding Crashers," won me over simply by declining the opportunity to sleep with Connor. (Trivia note: It's been 22 years since she co-starred with Douglas in "Fatal Attraction.")

As for Garner, it's a tough sell to convince us that any woman who envisions a lifelong relationship with Connor Mead is not certifiable. But she's such a professional; she even manages to keep a straight face, despite the acknowledged absurdity of Jenny/Jennifer's endeavor. "You're totally cheesy now," she says during her first encounter with the adult Connor. Her tone of wonder echoes my own in regard to McConaughey. How did the actor once touted as the next Paul Newman steer so far off that fine path?