Well, I hope you're all happy. We've turned a blind eye to the increasing mediocrity that is Matthew McConaughey for too long, and now he seems to think he's been given a mandate to phone it in. You ladies are the ones to blame, quite frankly, allowing his marble abs, just-out-of-bed curls, and honeyed tongue to dictate his continued presence in romantic comedies, cheesy fluff that usually smothers the laconic magnetism that's served him well in nifty ensemble pieces like "Lone Star," "U-571," "Frailty," or (shamefully guilty pleasure alert!) "Reign of Fire."

The uninspired "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" is McConaughey's latest, and from its clunky title you should be able to deduce that (a) he's made yet another rom-com; and (b) a "Christmas Carol" rip-off could be in your immediate future. The opening scenes tell us everything we need to know about McConaughey's Connor Mead, an in-demand photographer up to his... um... elbows in stunning women, though he's classy enough to break up with three of his most recent conquests via video conference chat so he can mount his newest peaks with a clear-ish conscience. Dumping girls in bulk also enables Connor to make efficient use of his time, since he's expected at the wedding of his little brother Paul (the underrated, underused Breckin Meyer) in - I don't remember where it is. Who cares?

"Magical comfort food for the weak and uneducated" is how Connor views love, an opinion that most evolved humans would know to keep to themselves at an event specifically designed to celebrate it. So we're supposed to long for his comeuppance, and dead Uncle Wayne foreshadows it. As played by an impressively slimy Michael Douglas, clad in a smoking jacket and doing his best Robert Evans impression, legendary pussyhound Uncle Wayne is Connor's hero, but he visits from the beyond to caution his surprised nephew against embracing such an unfulfilling existence. Uncle Wayne also warns Connor that he'll be visited by three ghosts and "be forced to feel things... like feelings."

Emma Stone ("Superbad") gives "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" a bit of a lift as the first ghost, a bubbly, scrunchied spectre named Allison, who once upon a time relieved the teenage Connor of his virginity and now takes the adult Connor on a tour of where it all went wrong. Apparently much of Connor's fear of commitment can be traced back to his enduring love for Jenny (Jennifer Garner), a childhood friend also conveniently in attendance at the wedding and, also conveniently, still carrying a torch for this cruel jerk who pursued her and then chickened out once he realized he was smitten. Of course Connor and Jenny bicker despite their obvious attraction, and of course Connor has a too-good-to-be-true rival (sexy Daniel Sunjata, "Rescue Me"), and of course Connor will ruin everything just before he fixes it and learns lessony stuff.

So basically anyone who slipped into a coma in 1884 and woke up in the theater just as "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" was beginning will be blown away by what happens. Now, that's not to say that predictability in plot is a total sin; there's actually something comforting about having a film play out exactly as you hope it will. And romantic comedies traffic in giving you what you think you want, but that alleged satisfaction often comes at the expense of one-dimensional characters, stock conflict, and oversimplified resolutions, all of which are found in "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past." Most of the women - except Garner, a good sport in her generic love-interest role - are portrayed as attention-starved harpies, the boring script doing no favors in particular for Lacey Chabert's hyperventilating bridezilla, though Robert Forster and Anne Archer do get to sparkle a little as her parents.

There are a couple of inspired bits - Connor being rained on by every single tear he's caused was far less disturbing than hearing the thwap-thwap-thwap of all of his used condoms hitting the ground - but director Mark Waters, who made an auspicious debut in 1997 with "The House of Yes," doesn't really do anything special with what he has, probably because all he has is a tediously misogynistic variation on Dickens' oft-told tale of redemption. And with his blinding white teeth offset by that constant tan, McConaughey is now threatening to become the Gen-X George Hamilton, a move that could be thwarted by a couple of juicy supporting roles that remind us why we keep paying to see him.

The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

(PG-13), directed by Mark Waters

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