There are few stories that have affected me as deeply as A Christmas Carol,
the Charles Dickens classic that was one of the first to introduce to
me the idea of a villain finding redemption. I've seen oodles of
adaptations, and most have been very agreeable, with the Muppet version and the George C. Scott version taking top honors. I've now found one to occupy the bottom of the barrel: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore and directed by Mark Waters.
This movie is a mild PG-13, but in some ways it's raunchier than many R-rated comedies. It takes the basic plot of A Christmas Carol
but makes the pressing issue not miserly greed and outright misanthropy
but insatiable lust and veiled misogyny. Connor Mead, played by Matthew
McConaughey, is our Ebenezer Scrooge of sorts, a bachelor who makes a
living taking shots of scantily clad women for famous magazines. His
conquests seem to loathe him and desire him all at once; not a single
female, it appears, is immune to his charms, but when they get together,
these ladies have plenty of venom to spill about his callous nature.
While Ebenezer is deliciously acidic, spouting off pithy zingers with
the force of a 19th-century Simon Cowell, Connor never has anything
particularly eloquent to say. He's just thoroughly obnoxious, though the
lechery that condemns him is overshadowed somewhat by the fact that
very nearly every other character in the movie is absurdly oversexed.
The movie centers around the wedding of Connor's younger brother Paul
(Breckin Meyer), who, as Bob and Fred rolled into one, is far more
likable than most but still guilty of cheating on his fiancee before
they were engaged. If there's a "Tiny Tim" of the movie, it would be his
impending marriage, the state of which becomes increasingly fragile
from the moment Connor turns up, to the shock of most, for Best Man
duty.
Filling the role of Jacob Marley is Wayne, the swingin'
uncle who taught Connor everything he knows. Wayne has a much larger
role in the film than Marley generally does; we see him playing a
pivotal role in flashbacks, and his ghost turns up frequently throughout
the film to talk things over with Connor. Michael Douglas plays Wayne
as comically despicable, with his affection for his nephew his only
really redeeming feature. Even once Connor has learned the lesson Wayne
strove to teach him, his deceased uncle is still up to his old tricks,
prowling the afterlife for Connor's cast-offs. Those would be the three
ghosts - except two of them are clearly not dead, while the other takes
the form of a braces-laden teenager, making Wayne's pursuit especially
creepy.
As usual, the ghost of the past is the one with the
most screen time. It would be nice, then, if she weren't so irritating.
Granted, this character is usually a bit of a nag, but in this case, she
also appears to be slightly deranged, making her commentary hard to
take after a few moments. Luckily, Connor's one true love is much more
tolerable. Her name is Jenny, and she is played by Jennifer Garner,
which is part of the reason this aspect of the story reminds me of the
far superior 13 Going on 30;
another is that the teenage version of Jenny is played by Christa B.
Allen, who also played the younger version of Garner's character in 13 Going on 30. (I also got a hint of LOST,
with pre-adolescent Jenny, like Ben-loving Dharmaville dweller Annie,
giving a birthday gift while on the swing set that the recipient still
cherishes years later.) In both films, a boy and girl grow up best
friends, but a longing for the popular crowd sweeps the girl away. In 13 Going on 30,
the girl turns her back on the boy, while he moves on, broken-hearted
but still true to himself. In this movie, Jenny never has the chance to
make a long-term, conscious decision like that, since at the first whiff
of heartache, Connor gets whisked off for indoctrination into his
uncle's intensive school of Love 'Em and Leave 'Em. As an adult, she's
bitter but otherwise nice enough, while he's the one with major
personality defects. The movies wind up in a pretty similar place, but
between sullying a beloved classic and making us put up with all sorts
of saucy shenanigans, The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past doesn't earn a genuine desire for a happy ending.
McConaughey is an actor who seemed to teeter between endearing and insufferable. In We Are Marshall,
the former characteristic was on display, but here, it's definitely the
latter. Certain scenes with the lovelorn Jenny and the sweet - but
never Bob Cratchit-force - Paul, whose high-strung but devoted fiancee
Sandra (Lacey Chabert) is much like Mrs. Cratchit, make him tolerable, but it's too little too late. While those who love A Christmas Carol will have fun pointing out parallels (and M*A*S*H
fans should keep an ear out for references to that show courtesy of
Sandra's dad, Sergeant Volkom (Robert Forster), a gung-ho Korean War
veteran), they might also want to listen for the distant but
unmistakable sound of Charles Dickens rolling over in his grave.
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