Connor Mead (Matthew McConaughey) is the world’s top fashion photographer; he has an eye like no other, even if it means putting his models in total peril to provide the perfect shot. With the fame comes the dangerous self obsessed big head, and if he’s not saying exactly what he thinks, he’s seducing women for one night stands. Come the weekend of his brother Paul’s (Breckin Meyer) wedding and his ego is at an all time high, a virtually unstoppable pig, holding a video conference call between three women all of whom he wants to dump but groups them together to save time.  For the weekend of the wedding Connor is forced to return home to the lavish estate of his dead parents, and upon arrival runs immediately into Jenny (Jennifer Garner) the one that he truly loved, but like every other woman he disposed of at the earliest possible opportunity.  Combined with and undercurrent of feelings for Jenny and his hatred of weddings it seems that Connor is going to ruin the big day.

That night however Connor receives a visit from his uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas) telling him he must change his ways and in order to do so he will be sending three of Connors lovers to help him make the change, all his visitors including his uncle however are ghosts.

Ever the one to try all genres I settled down to watch this romantic comedy with no expectations, I did think it strange that a movie with big stars that as well as McConaughey and Garner featured 70’s icon Robert Forster and the reuniting of Michael Douglas and Anne Archer (who last worked together on Fatal Attraction), had completely slipped my attention; nor seemed to have received a cinema release. Of course as the movie played out it became obvious, this was a third rate rehash of the legendary Scrooge story trading the backdrop of Christmas for a wedding although it did keep the snow. Scrooge is one of those tales that people always want to retell or bring up to date, sadly it rarely works and the Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past is no exception to the rule.

Rather like this review it’s a poorly pieced together piece of filmmaking that is saved in some levels by some fairly amusing scenes. As an overall structure however it’s a fairly bleak offering, with characters particularly with Connor that you don’t care about. The character of Jenny played by the lovely Jennifer Garner is incredibly one dimensional, and despite the epic journey that Connor goes on by the end of the movie you don’t feel that you learned anything more about Jenny than you did in the first few seconds of meeting her. The first ghost is no exception to the rule on the scale of blandness, a situation made worse by the fact that the ghost is meant to be sixteen when she looks thirty.

There are as I said some genuinely funny moments most of which delivered by the bride to be’s father played by Robert Foster who plays a character known as The Sarge. A character so scarred by the events of the Korean war he cannot help but talk about it continuously, there’s a great scene where he tells a group of seated guests about how he pushes back in the intestines of a good friend. But sadly the humour of the Sarge is not enough to save the movie.

The movie is fairly standard, and I guess it explains its straight to DVD status, and I cant help but think it was probably shelved for a quite a while beforehand too. You cant go dabbling in an almost identical variation of a Charles Dicken’s classic and expect the same sort of acclaim of the original, and you almost get the impression that the movies producers believe they have their Scrooged of the new millennium, unlike 1988’s Scrooged however this wont be enjoyed year in year out, you can make only so many variations of a story (the best I still believe is the 1930’s movie adaptation) before you bore the audience into an early grave. The Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past will not be enjoyed in years to come, and if you’re very lucky and close your eyes you might miss its passing completely.