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STUDIO: Warner Brothers
MSRP: $28.98
RATED: PG-13
RUNNING TIME: 100 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Nothing!
The Pitch
The ladies will haunt your ass.
Bitches abound.
The Humans
Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Robert Forster, Breckin Meyer, Emma Stone, Lacey Chabert and Anne Archer
The Nutshell
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is a fairly decent romantic comedy. The script has floated around for so long that it was looking like Kevin Smith’s follow-up to Jersey Girl. The studios changed hands, the leads got switched and Kevin Smith went back to dick and fart jokes. Mark Waters took the directing helm and threw together what passes for an average romantic comedy. Yet, it rises slightly above with its middle of the road aping of A Christmas Carol.
The Lowdown
Connor Mead is a playboy that takes sweet pics during the day and hits the trim at night. His lavish Uncle Wayne died recently, leaving Connor and his brother a little distant. Connor’s brother Paul is getting married and it’s stirring up old feelings. Connor’s childhood sweetheart Jenny has shown up with a new guy, leaving Connor feeling a little down. That’s when his dead Uncle Wayne and three ghosts show up to take Connor into a trip through his romantic past.
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past takes Dickens and tries to dumb it down with the trappings of the romantic comedy. Jennifer Garner is passable as the love interest, but you’ve got to overcome McConaughey as this big pile of blonde dumb. There’s nothing that the man can do at this point in his career with material like this. He shows up and mugs for the camera. Women in middle America feel like there’s something special connecting him to the moisture between their legs. Thus, a supple amount of cash is thrown down at the box office window.
The breakdown between Uncle Wayne serving as a Jacob Marley figure for Connor Mead’s journey to self-discovery and the main plot is a little stilted. Too much time is spent forcing trips into the past with special FX laden looks at how unemotional Connor has become since losing Jenny in childhood. You’ve got Emma Stone leading a nearly twenty-five minute long trip into Connor’s childhood, while the Present and Future segments get dropped off in between trips to the main story. Anne Archer, Robert Forster, Breckin Meyer and Lacey Chabert try to keep the wedding plot going while the background players throw in quips for the mouthbreathers to guffaw.
I can’t say that the film stretches the main plot to feature length. There’s enough material here to justify the release, but it needs tighter pacing. So much of the film is spent running to the latest development and then dropping the ball as we see a forced bit of comedy. What’s worse is when they try to use plot tangents to elicit an emotional response from the audience. If you want a mild comedy to pass the time, you could do worse.
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is a film that comes to DVD looking as well as most recent cinema jaunts. There’s very little edge enhancement and background noise. Plus,
the DD 5.1 soundtrack really pops across all channels. There’s a Where the Wild Things Are trailer at the start of the disc, so hipsters will like that. Unfortunately, WB saw fit not to include any special features.
The Package
The
DVD
comes
to
you with no special features. Why buy it new? The second-hand market is
booming due to opening week purchases of quickie Home Video dumps. Romantic comedy fans deserve some supplemental material. Hell, the Blu-Ray
got a featurette. They couldn’t have done the same
for the DVD?
Little Breckin Man.