"The Spiderwick Chronicles" director Mark Waters helmed this highly amusing, "Scrooge" type spin on romance. Scenarists Jon Lucas and Scott Moore of "The Hangover" furnish some frankly hilarious dialogue.<br /><br />Arrogant playboy bachelor photographer, Connor Mead (Matthew McConaughey of "Failure to Launch"), dumps three women during a conference call when he feels that they are complicating his lifestyle. Our protagonist thinks love is a myth. He opposes marriage on any grounds later to his childhood sweetheart Jenny Perotti (Jennifer Garner of "Juno") when they collide with each other again at the wedding rehearsal dinner for his kid brother Paul (Breckin Meyer of "Road Trip") and future wife Sandra (Lacey Chabert of "Black Christmas") in Newport.<br /><br />As far as Connor sees it, "marriage is an archaic and oppressive institution that should have been abolished years ago." As for love, Connor reviles it as "magical comfort food for the weak and the uneducated. Furthermore, he insists "love leaves you weak, dependent, and fat." A bespectacled Michael Douglas enters the action about 18 minutes later steals the show as Connor's recently deceased Uncle Wayne. Connor is standing in the men's room when Uncle Wayne materializes at a urinal and relieves himself. When Connor tries to touch him to prove that Uncle Wayne is only a figment of his imagination, Uncle Wayne shrinks away from him: "Don't touch a man when he is hanging a wire." The worldly, wise, but very dead Uncle Wayne has returned to help Connor mend his ways. "Tonight," he informs Connor, "things are gonna change." Uncle Wayne explains: "Tonight you're going to be visited by three ghosts." Wayne assures Connor, "and you're going to be forced to feel things that you haven't felt for a long time." Later, when Connor goes to his bedroom for a rendezvous, he finds red-headed Allison Vandermeersh (Emma Stone of "Superbad") waiting for him. Allison was Connor's first sexual score. She tells Connor she plans to take him back through allhis past girlfriends and help him figure out how he got his head stuck so far up his hindquarters. We learn that Jenny gave Connor his first camera, and Connor's pursuit and initial loss of Jenny prompted him to seek advice from Uncle Wayne. Years later Connor hooks up with Jenny and makes the mistake of not snuggling with her after sex. He sneaks off into the night and she doesn't speak to him again until ten years afterward when they meet at Paul's wedding. Not sooner has Allison--the ghosts of girlfriends past--left him than his girl Friday Melanie (Noureen De Wulf of "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard") appear as the ghost of girlfriends present. The real problem with "The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" is that McConaughey and Jennifer Garner lack charismatic chemistry as a couple. This is basically a conservative, Republican style stab at marriage that spouts anti-gay ideology. The wedding cake scene is funny and McConaughey is well cast as a callous stud with lots of eye-candy babes parading around him. Lacey Chabert is good as the bride who is marrying McConaughey's brother. The action transpires during a snowy weekend for our hero's brother's wedding. As Marine Sergeant Volkom, Robert Forster of "Jackie Brown" plays the bride's father who marries his daughter, and Anne Archer still looks mighty fetching as his divorced wife Vonda Volkom.