Ghost of girlfriends past rating10/7/2023 ![]() ![]() Ghosts of Girlfriends Past requires a certain finesse – really, how do you sell a romantic comedy about a twisted womanizer, and how do you get the audience to buy his inevitable turnaround? – and neither Waters nor his leading man are up to the task. (And make-up and wardrobe have done him no favors, with his Easy-Bake tan, attack of the Crest Whitestrips, and too-literal interpretation of Connor's oiliness in duller stretches of the film, I could think of nothing but taking blotting papers to his face.) Director Waters, who began his career with the edgy, unsettling The House of Yes and also made the kicky Mean Girls, lately has been peddling much softer stuff (see 2005's insipid Just Like Heaven). Perhaps in the hands of a more capable, less coasting actor, the character might have played like something more than a toxic spill. Not so with McConaughey's wolfish Connor. He's a quaint relic – not nearly as amusing as co-scripters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore seem to think he is – but harmless enough. As he's aged, Douglas has had some fun with go-big roles such as Wayne, and he appears to have styled this one after Hollywood mogul Robert Evans circa the Seventies: turtleneck and shades and swimming in sex. The couples just keep livin Foundation recently introduced the Greenlights Grant. Several of the supporting players do nice work, especially Stone ( Superbad) as the brace-faced ghost of Connor's first girlfriend she injects a genuine spunkiness into a film that's mostly predictable and deeply cynical. Camila and Matthew McConaughey are taking significant steps to improve school safety across the United States. Wayne, the Marley surrogate in this A Christmas Carol reimagining, then ushers Connor through an evening of reflection and reckoning, with the overall aim of nudging him back into the arms of his first love, Jenny (Garner, with negligible screen time). Wayne has been dead for years, but he makes a surprise appearance – to the eyes of Connor alone – at the wedding of Connor's younger brother, Paul (Meyer). Love, he argues, is nothing more than "magical comfort food for the weak and uneducated," a sentiment he lifted from his mentor, Uncle Wayne (Douglas). He dumps last week's conquests via teleconference as he's already undressing his next lay. In the spirit, but not the complexity, of such oil-slick cinematic seducers as Alfie and Roger Dodger's Roger Swanson, celebrity photographer Connor Mead (McConaughey) is a quantity-over-quality kind of guy. Together, they will discover what turned Connor into such a shameless player and whether he has a second chance to find - and this time, keep - the love of his life.Ghosts indeed: This romantic comedy by name alone attempts to make funny – not to mention culturally relevant – the kind of swinging-dick misogyny that went out of fashion years ago. Uncle Wayne has an urgent message for his protege, which he delivers through the ghosts of Connor's jilted girlfriends - past, present and future - who take him on a revealing and hilarious odyssey through a lifetime of failed relationships. Just when it looks like Connor may single-handedly ruin the wedding, he gets a wake-up call from the ghost of his late Uncle Wayne, the hard-partying, legendary ladies man upon whose exploits Connor has modeled his lifestyle. Unfortunately, on the eve of the big event, Connor's mockery of romance proves a real buzz-kill for Paul, the wedding party and a houseful of well wishers - including Connor's childhood friend Jenny, the one woman in his life who has always seemed immune to his considerable charm. Connor's brother Paul is more the romantic type. A committed bachelor with a no-strings policy, he thinks nothing of breaking up with multiple women on a conference call while prepping his next date. Celebrity photographer Connor Mead loves freedom, fun and women - in that order.
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