Womanizer Connor Mead (Matthew McConaughey, left) is haunted by former lovers when he crosses paths with old flame Jenny (Jennifer Garner) in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

I ran into an acquaintance after viewing Ghosts of Girlfriends Past who asked what I thought of the film. “It didn’t cause me to die inside,” I said, a catchphrase I expect to see on the movie’s promotional posters next week.

In a bad boyfriend move of epic scope, McConaughey's character breaks up with three women at the same time via video conference call.

I meant it as a compliment. In the category of gleaming romantic comedies starring casually rich people with big smiles and small problems, Ghosts is all right. It delivers some decent repartee before things go irreversibly trite, and it has the good sense to feature one immensely likeable actor, Jennifer Garner. Her foil, Matthew McConaughey, is an actor who remains (a little less) likeable despite having squandered his now-forgotten potential as a real actor to become little more than a bongo-playing tabloid star and Kate Hudson purse-holder with laudable abs.

McConaughey plays Connor Mead, a photographer and Herb Ritts protégé who beds the ladies with the same frequency most of us brush our teeth. But he’s not so interested in the post-gargle snuggle. In a bad boyfriend move of epic proportions, he breaks up with three women at the same time via video conference call. Meanwhile, another starlet writhes on the couch behind him, awaiting her humiliation.

She: “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

He: “It usually has something to do with your father.”

She: “That’s ridiculous. I never even met my father.”

I laughed.

Mead has a rickety philosophical justification for his hound-dogging ways. Essentially, he believes that love is an illusion created to perpetuate another illusion called marriage – wait, that’s a paraphrase from St. Elmo’s Fire, which is to say, there’s nothing new under this particular sun. The script (credited to Jon Lucas and Scott Moore) draws not only from the deep, deep well of Andrew McCarthy’s filmography but also from Charles Dickens‘s equally impressive oeuvre. But what Ghosts lacks in originality, it makes up for – at first – in snap.

Connor spars with former lover Jenny at his brother's wedding in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

On the eve of his brother’s wedding at a luxurious mansion (how do middle class people get married in Hollywood?), Connor is visited by his original partner in crimes against womanhood — his dead uncle, Wayne. Michael Douglas plays the alpha playboy with oily élan, channeling Robert Evans, wrapped in an ascot and Scotch. Back in the day, he tutored young Connor in the artistry of the pick-up, explaining that whoever “cares least has the power.” Such wisdom shaped Connor into an adult male who treats women like meat and mixes a good martini, though not in that order. But Uncle Wayne returns from the grave like Jacob Marley rattling his chains — or at least his ice cubes — to try and readjust his nephew’s compass toward love.

The first ghost who pays a visit is a pre-teen (Emma Stone, pulling a lot of laughs out of an all-braces grin and fingerless gloves) who takes Connor back in time, starting at a seminal prom in his adolescence. There, to REO Speedwagon’s Keep on Loving You (nothing good can happen when that song is playing!), wee Connor messed up his big chance with the girl he always loved, neighbour Jenny. When they meet again as adults in the 1990s, Connor has fully transitioned into a long-haired, unbuttoned Night at the Roxbury ladykiller, an image so extreme it has to be a riff on McConaughey’s own lothario reputation.

Jenny (Garner) tolerates him anyway, but their brief affair ends in heartbreak. Garner, with her impeccable carriage and serious eyes, brings a smart-girl element to the proceedings, and McConaughey genuinely brightens around her, dialing down his own self-consciousness, as well as the character’s. As in Juno, Garner imparts just the smallest bit of sadness in a role that’s wafer thin; you can see her trying hard to make something of this.

Back in the present, the couple is forced together at the wedding of Connor’s brother, Paul (Breckin Meyer), the only guy who can stand him. Paul’s marrying a high-strung bridezilla, played with zero comedic instinct by Lacey Chabert. Of course, bad bachelor Connor is a wedding destroyer, knocking over a cake and hitting on the bride’s mother (Anne Archer). These nuptial hijinks wipe out any tension, dramatic or comedic, that the two leads generated early on. Their story soon plays second fiddle to an onslaught of horny bridesmaid jokes.

Somewhere in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is a smart, adult comedy about the psychology of love; that it’s hidden in this minor, throwaway farce is truly haunting.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past opens May 1.

Katrina Onstad is the film columnist for CBCNews.ca.