From today's Oregonian....
How's this for faint praise? Despite being foolish in most respects, "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" more or less keeps you on its wacky rom-com narrative train all the way to the end. But that's probably a testament to the power of Charles Dickens' storytelling more than anything else.
You see, the film is a very, very loose adaptation of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" -- only the aging miser Scrooge is replaced by an aging lothario photographer (Matthew McConaughey) who loves 'em and dumps 'em (in bulk on iChat at one point). And instead of three ghosts showing Scrooge how he became a stingy jerk, three ghosts show McConaughey how fear and bad advice made him a poster child for social-disease prevention. The ghosts also steer him in the direction of the childhood friend (Jennifer Garner) who calls him on his bullcorn.
The dialogue is almost primitive at times, almost every female character is an idiot, and McConaughey grossly overplays the bachelor-sleazeball antics at the beginning; I found myself wanting to take a hose to the screen during most of the first half. But the film improves slightly as it goes (much like McConaughey), the larger conceit is sort of clever, Garner does her darnedest to ground the thing emotionally, and every once in a blue moon the film actually makes you laugh, almost exclusively when one of the older supporting actors is talking -- especially Michael Douglas, who plays his Jacob Marley character as legendarily hedonistic Hollywood producer Robert Evans.
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C; 100 minutes; rated PG-13 for for sexual content throughout, some language and a drug reference.
'Ghosts of Girlfriends Past' (The Oregonian, Friday, May 1, 2009)
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