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Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

• Directed by Mark Waters
• Written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore
• Starring Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner
• Classification: 14A

Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol gets reworked as a not-so-romantic comedy in the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past , yet another movie starring Matthew McConaughey as a commitment-phobic player who learns about love.

McConaughey plays Connor Mead, a New York photographer and roguish ladies' man. The movie's crass tone is set in the opening scene, as Connor is terrifying a model by having an archer shoot at an apple on her head, while she's moving. Having got his money shot, so to speak, he's closing in for the kill. But first, he takes a moment to break up with three women via video conferencing, leaving them in tears.

Before he can get back to his model, Connor's sassy Indo-American assistant (Noreen DeWulf) reminds him he's due at the Newport wedding of his younger brother, Paul (Breckin Meyer). After arriving at the country mansion, Connor continues to behave revoltingly. He grabs the breast of the bride's mother (Anne Archer), propositions the bridesmaid and leaves the bride (Lacey Chabert) in tears.

After knocking back a succession of Scotches, he informs the wedding assembly that love is a “magic comfort food for the weak and uneducated,” which may mean he's confusing it with Scotch. The only person who calls him on his b.s. is Jenny (Jennifer Garner) his childhood sweetheart, who is now a doctor, so you know she's smart.

After having offended everyone, Connor goes to the men's room, where he sees the ghost of his Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas, looking like an antique Vegas groover) at the urinal. The older man tells Connor that he now regrets his life of sex, drugs and celebrity schmoozing. (No one should suggest Douglas has been typecast.) To save Connor from a similar fate, he has arranged for his nephew to be visited by a succession of cautionary girlfriend ghosts.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past , which is directed by Mark Waters ( Mean Girls , Just Like Heaven ), and written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, isn't just ordinarily lame, it easily exceeds any normal requirements for witless sleaze. Connor, thinking he's about to bang his bridesmaid, instead finds himself almost climbing into bed with his first ghost, the 16-year-old Alison (Emma Stone). Wearing orthodontic braces and a bad eighties' perm, she's the girl with whom he had his first sexual experience. Now, as his spiritual tour guide, Alison reminds Connor how badly he had been crushed when Jenny ditched him at a junior-high dance, and his uncle subsequently taught him to be a manipulative s.o.b.

No real laughs yet, but the bad-taste meter keeps rising: There's a scene where Connor is confronted by all the women with whom he had a quickie or a one-night stand ( grazie , Federico Fellini), followed by another where he finds himself in a shower of all the condoms he ever used.

These flashbacks are intercut with Connor causing even more chaos among the wedding guests. The only thing that mitigates Connor's boorishness is that most of the other wedding guests are almost as bad: The bride is a hysterical screecher, the groom a dope, the bridesmaids a trio of oversexed airheads and the father-of-the-bride (Robert Forster) a military automaton.

Only two characters might qualify as sympathetic. Jenny (Garner, looking vulnerably thin and pouty) suggests how deeply sad she is from carrying a torch for a jerk. In spite of the script, Garner tries.

The other sympathetic character is Brad (Daniel Sunjata), a handsome African-American doctor (the soundtrack tastefully plays Funkytown when he appears onscreen), who has been invited to the wedding as Jenny's potential date – or “wedding sex” as the bridesmaids put it. He's intelligent, caring and accomplished but for some strange reason, Jenny prefers Connor. Now that I come to think of it, there's only one sympathetic character in the movie – and he's just the “wedding sex.”