![]() ![]() Robert Forster, as the father of the bride, and a military man who seems to still be fighting the Korean War in his mind, gets to give the funniest, if most ridiculous, speeches. Michael Douglas, though playing one of the slimiest characters of his career, does manage to find the right comic touch, and comes across as almost endearing. ![]() There are some very funny moments to be found here. No surprise, the main focus is on his on again-off again relationship with Jenny over the years. But Uncle Wayne’s ghost is now saying, “Don’t waste your life like I did, kid.”Īnd before you can say boo, the first of three female ghosts (of girlfriends past, present and future) materialize and take Connor on a cliché-filled trip of ghost gags, showing him exactly where and when he went wrong in his treatment of women. It begins in the men’s room, where Connor bumps into his late Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas), the self-made lothario who once took him under his wing and taught him everything he knew about the conquest of women. There’s plenty of ogling from Connor, as well as a drunken and cynical anti-marriage speech he delivers at the rehearsal dinner, and then the plundering of Dickens gets under way. Only maid of honor Jenny (a miscast Jennifer Garner) has the ability to see right through him and know that he’s a cad. When Connor shows up at the wedding mansion (shot as the Crane Estate in Ipswich), his reputation is such that all the bridesmaids start to swoon and all the groomsmen want to shake his hand. That the filmmakers choose to tell their story in the form of (in homage to, by ripping off) Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is nothing more or less than confounding.īut there’s Connor, attending, against his will, the wedding of his kid brother Paul (Breckin Meyer) to the problematic Sandra (Lacey Chabert), a character who is so broadly drawn, she regularly, and without reason, shifts from sensitive bride to shrieking shrew. Yet maybe that’s what they were going after in setting up this story of redemption, of trying to make him see the light and possibly mend his ways. If the filmmakers’ objectives were to make this guy funny, they’ve failed miserably. “I love all women,” he offers as an explanation of his behavior as he’s breaking up with three of them on a video conference call, while a fourth waits impatiently on a nearby couch. He’s a smooth-talking egocentric who plows thorough his conquests, then move on to the next batch. But no, that’s not the case with Matthew McConaughey playing Connor Mead.Ī misfire from frame one, in which McConaughey’s Connor is introduced as a big-money fashion photographer whose only goal in life seems to be upping the count of the number of women he’s bedded. ![]() Alec Guinness playing Colonel Nicholson in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” comes to mind. On rare occasions, an actor is talented enough to portray a highly unlikable character, but somehow turn him around into someone for whom the viewer feels some sympathy. Movie after movie, starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day or Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, told the same tale. Yet every once in a while, a romantic comedy comes along that breaks the mold, say, “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” Sorry, that’s not the case with this one. Let’s hear it for the romantic comedy, that staple of cinema since the ’30s, that tried and true formula where all is fine at the beginning, things get messed up in the middle, then somehow everything works out and leads to happily ever after. ![]()
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