Review: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past a Little Bit of McConaugheaven

Matthew McConaughey actually kind of redeems his string of paycheck rom-coms here, with Jennifer Garner

Review in a Hurry: Ghosts mischievously fulfills your vengeful wishes against exes, with surprising sensitivity and humor. It also helps that the whipping boy is Matthew McConaughey, who earns his smirk this time around.

The Bigger Picture: Every jilted woman harbors a potent revenge fantasy. It looks a lot like Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and goes like this: You force the lover who's wronged you to relive all of the moments where they took you for granted. Every one of their callous gestures witnessed in perpetuity until they tearfully repent and insist that they'll want another chance.

Though Ghosts may look indistinguishable from the dozen other McConaughey paycheck rom-coms, this time we're not meant to be charmed by that honey-dipped Southern tongue. In Ghosts, McConaughey plays a loathsome narcissist, Conor Mead, with a merciless "no strings attached" policy that leaves an unfathomable amount of women in despair.

The weekend of his baby brother's (Breckin Meyer) wedding, Conor runs into his first and most passionate love (Jennifer Garner, who is so sallow and brittle in this movie that she has the warmth of a stick insect). Thrown off his game and soused in Scotch, Conor is then visited by the ghosts of relationships past, present and future.

Predictable? Of course. But the filmmakers dole out the pop psychology and payback in creatively cheeky ways so that you're genuinely bought into Conor's redemption.

Now, McConaughey has done us all wrong with his tortuously lazy career choices. The man has clearly made a decision to put his feet up, take his shirt off and let the money roll in.

And though he butters himself thickly with that cocksure shtick this time, too, here he honestly earns your heart. Conor has the flamboyant confidence of a matador, but McConaughey draws out the right amount of sleaze and tenderness to transform Conor from a bullfighter to a rodeo clown. Witnessing him suffer the reprisals of an estrogen lynch mob and humble himself before his childhood love is cathartic and pleasurable.

The 180—a Second Opinion: You may not be ready to forgive McConaughey for his sadistic crimes against cinema, in which case do not set foot into this movie. He lays it on thick and you could feel smothered by all that that coco-buttered charm.