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Let This Girlfriend Get Away

Critics mixed on McConaughey rom-com

By Matt Cantor, Newser Staff

Posted May 1, 2009 9:51 AM CDT

(Newser) – The latest Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy, which tells the story of an aging womanizer revisiting his past, is drawing a mix of mild appreciation and hearty derision from critics:

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past "is cheesy, tacky, and gimmicky,” writes Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. “But as directed by Mark Waters, it's also prankish and inventive enough to be kind of fun.”

Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times says the “amusingly sentimental” movie parallels McConaughey’s own life: “It's the hard truth that his young hunk days are ending.”
The flick is “a junky-looking romantic comedy that’s neither remotely romantic nor passably comic,” Manohla Dargis grouses in the New York Times.
The film “never comes as close as spitting distance to a laugh,” agrees Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. It “swims in its own brand of crude, mirthless muck.”

[Videos (1)]

Matthew McConaughey, star of "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past," is interviewed at the premiere of the film in Los Angeles, Monday, April 27, 2009. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

In this film publicity image released by Warner Bros., Matthew McConaughey, left, and Jennifer Garner are shown in a scene from "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past." (AP Photo/Warner Bros.)

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The film's trailer. (YouTube)

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Let This Girlfriend Get Away

Critics mixed on McConaughey rom-com