"Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" shows a little spirit

Take Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," slide it into the present day, make the main character not a cranky old miser but a cheesy young womanizer, and you've got Mark Waters' "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past," an oddly supernatural romantic comedy that works only a bit better than it deserves to.

Matthew McConaughey plays Connor Mead, a New York fashion photographer so knee-deep in women that he breaks up with them in bulk. (That is, three at a time, on a conference call — one of the film's funnier moments.) On the weekend of his brother's wedding — an occasion he uses to rail against the idea of marriage and fidelity — he is visited by three ghosts who take him on a tour through his romantic past, present and future. Also present at the wedding is the one woman who has been consistent in his life: his winsomely smiling childhood friend Jenny (Jennifer Garner), with whom Connor had a brief, ill-fated relationship years ago.

OK, raise your hands if you know how all of this will sort itself out, even without the help of a lisping Tiny Tim and an enormous Christmas goose. (There is a lot of picturesque snow, though; not to mention Michael Douglas, as Connor's late uncle and mentor, hanging around as a sort of lecherous version of Jacob Marley.)

Though the movie seems to take forever to get to the point, the actors are just cute enough together to pull it off. McConaughey, who stretches himself dramatically by remaining fully shirted throughout, has some moments of funny glee as a guy who knows and doesn't care that he's a jerk; Garner is sweetly sardonic — and makes us believe that there's something in the guy that she sees and we don't.

Lacey Chabert (previously directed by Waters in "Mean Girls") shows real screwball chops as the perpetually freaked-out bride; Noureen DeWulf eye-rolls like a champ as Connor's long-suffering assistant. "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" doesn't do Dickens any favors, but in a year that brought us "Bride Wars," it'll do.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com