Review of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009) by Johnny T — 21 Jun 2011

Writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore steal from the best, gleefully cribbing from "A Christmas Carol" to fashion a screenplay with heart and sharp one-liners. The movie is cheesy, tacky, and gimmicky. But as directed by Mark Waters (Mean Girls), it's also prankish and inventive enough to be kind of fun. Despite my McConaughey resistance I got more guilty chuckles from Ghosts of Girlfriends Past than "Failure to Launch" or "Four Christmases." You've got to love a movie that so eagerly assassinates its leading man's cuddly image, and which also manages to blow a wicked kiss to Fatal Attraction. The season's first genuine guilty pleasure. In terms of character, McConaughey is the toxin and Garner the antitoxin. It's not exactly chemistry, but as pharmacology it's effective.

VERDICT: "Matinée" - (Mixed reaction). These kinds of movies are usually movies that had some good things, but some bad things kept it from being amazing. This rating says to pay matinée prices to see at a theatre, buy an ex-rental or a cheap price of the DVD to own.