Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
5/3/09
It's not a question people
are often asked, but if you ask me “What's the greatest fictional story
ever written?” I'm gonna tell you hands down, it's Charles Dickens' A
Christmas Carol. I know, you're rolling your eyes, muttering
something about corniness and 70's sitcoms, but I'll stand my ground.
What else can you ask of great fiction for but to illuminate the human
condition and provide us with inspiration and hope? And there's no
story that speaks to me more on the subjects of how past events make us
the people we are today, but don't give us an excuse not to recognize and
improve our shortcomings. There is nothing more important than our
capacity for change, and I've never seen a feature adaptation of A Christmas
Carol (OK, I'll admit most of those sitcom episodes do suck) that didn't
at least make me feel energized. Which brings us to Ghosts of
Girlfriends Past, one of the more outside-the-box takes on Dickens'
tale. Transplanting the Ebeneser Scrooge saga to a modern romantic
comedy, it finds more insight into the genre than one might expect, and
despite occasional detours into piffle, maintains the heart and soul of
our greatest fictional story.
Connor Mead (Matthew McConaughey)
is living The Life: a jet-setting photographer, he takes pictures
of beautiful women, then uses his skillfully crafted lines to lure them
into short-term relationships he ends (sometimes more than one at a time
via conference call) just when the girl really starts to have feelings
for him. One fateful weekend, he's due at the palatial estate of
his late Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas) to serve as Best Man at the wedding
of his brother Paul (Breckin Meyer) and his fiance Sandra (Lacey Chabert).
Everything Connor sees underscores his hatred of the institution:
the bridesmaids (Rachel Boston, Camille Guaty & Amanda Walsh) are on
the prowl, Paul's soon-to-be in-laws (Robert Forster and Anne Archer) haven't
spoken in years, and the stressed-out Sandra goes Bridezilla at the slightest
problem. It does nothing for his sour mood that the Maid of Honor
is Jenny Perotti (Jennifer Garner), the childhood crush who was the closest
he ever came to a real relationship and who now hates him with the passionate
venom of unresolved issues. Connor drinks a LOT of scotch, makes
a scene and retires to his room, where Uncle Wayne's ghost announces the
first of three spirits who'll show him the error of his ways. The
Ghost of Girlfriends Past is Allison Vandermeersh (Emma Stone), to whom
he lost his virginity at 16. She show how sensitive young Connor
turned, heartbroken after a slight by Jenny, to ladies' man Wayne for advice.
And oh, did he ever get it, leading to years of philandering briefly interrupted
by another near-miss with the Girl of His Dreams. With nothing close
to a girlfriend in his Present, assistant Melanie (Noureen DeWulf) shows
him just how much the people he knows pity and despise him, and as his
presence starts to unravel the wedding, it's left to the Ghost of Girlfriends
Future (Olga Maliouk) to show him where his dark, loveless road will end.
In reframing A Christmas
Carol as a romantic comedy, writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore and director
Mark Waters (best known for Mean Girls, but I highly recommend his
underseen gem The Spiderwick Chronicles)
first and foremost get the comedy right: the movie delivers laughs
pretty much from beginning to end. Connor Mead is a delightful modern
Scrooge figure (good call not giving him a cutesy quasi-Scrooge name),
stealing from people emotionally the same way his predecessor hoarded their
money. It's smart of the script to lean on his predatory tenancies,
since living a life of true one-night stands would really hurt no one but
himself. But by taking seriously Uncle Wayne's advice that the person
in a relationship with the most power is the one who cares the least, he
seeks to avenge his childhood heartbreak by ensuring that every woman he
meets gives him the power to hurt her and then does so with so much charm
he leaves them begging for more. That this kind of behavior is actually
applauded by many a romantic comedy (particularly those starring McConaughy,
a wonderful comic actor who's headlined some truly dreadful films) makes
it a perfect target for dissection and reversal here. And while I'm
not sure I really bought the notion that there's magic between Connor and
Jenny (more that the emotional scars that bind them together weren't as
intentionally inflicted as those of his other ex's), the closing scenes
do a wonderful job showing that opening his heart to his newly enlarged
family is going to make him a better, happier man. It's kinda odd,
actually, that while there's nothing wrong with McConaughy and Garner as
a couple, it's actually as brother to Meyer and brother-in-law to Chabert
that he shines. It's a pair of speeches he gives, first to her and
then to them both at the reception, that are Ghosts of Girlfriends Past's
best contributions to the Christmas Carol cannon.
The acting is top-notch across
the board. As I've mentioned, McConaughy is great in the lead, and
unique among all movie Scrooges, we can't help but love him just like that
long trail of girls he's loved and left. But he also handles his
transformation well, and the reserves of manic energy upon which he can
always call serve him very well in the closing redemption scenes (There's
a marvelous Christmas Carol in-joke after he awakens from Girlfriends
Future's visit). Garner gets the job done, although Jenny isn't exactly
a taxing role. Douglas is a hoot both alive and dead as Uncle Wayne:
it's hard to say exactly what his stake is in engineering Connor's second
chance, but I actually thought that ambiguity was pretty funny. At
one point, he tells him that everything he'll suffer is for his own good,
except those things that are for Wayne's entertainment, and doesn't exactly
seem miserable on The Other Side. Meyer makes a great patient brother,
and Chabert is delightfully mentally unstable without going over the side
and seeming like she'd make an awful wife. Forster is hilarious as
her Dad, still relating everything to his Korean War service. Best
among the Ghosts is Stone, delightfully cheesy stuck in her 80's heyday
while delivering a snarky running commentary on the events they visit (I
particularly liked a moment when Uncle Wayne is advising young Connor on
the way of the world and she cries out “Somebody call Child Protective
Services!”). Logan Miller and Christa B. Allen (who also played a
young Garner in 13 Going on 30) provide invaluable support in the
pivotal flashback scenes that establish the roots of their relationship.
It's not all perfect, of
course, as the film can't surmount all of the flaws of the Hollywood Romantic
Comedy that I constantly rail against. The Obligatory Breakup seems
even less motivated than usual, and I'm telling you that Polaroid instant
photography didn't work ANYTHING like the movie needs it to. I'll
admit it tickled me that the writers could find a way to end A Christmas
Carol with a Race to the Airport, and it wasn't half bad as they go.
And it helps tremendously that the movie actually cares why its' characters
do the things they do, keeping them from feeling like Plot Point Automatons
at least 95% of the time. Nobody sings into a hairbrush, nobody writes
a nasty magazine article about anyone else. Who can ask for more?
I'd be remiss not to mention the spectacularly cheesy closing credits title
song by a band called All Too Much. I missed the 80's salad days
of songs that forced some poor band to build a song around the movie's
title: Allison Vandermeersh is gonna LOVE it.
Ghosts of Girlfriends
Past will be slammed for predictability. After all, IMDB counts
37 different movies that contain the words “Christmas Carol” in their titles.
But it's an entry in a genre not noted for its' innovation, and by welding
the skeleton of a truly great story onto the standard romcom cliches, it
makes that familiarity a virtue rather than a vice. And, frankly,
for a society that too often views relationships as something to be won
rather than cherished, Dickens' words prove more timely than one might
expect. And they've still got Tiny Tim in reserve for the sequel! |
