I write this before a moment of film screens: this movie’s going to suck. So it’s later now, and I have to amend my earlier prediction: it doesn’t totally suck. It’s completely schmaltzy, with generous dabs of cliché and predictability, but the package is nicely wrapped and there were a couple of performances I liked, so not a complete tear down. But enough praise, because as much as seeing Michael Douglas saunter about as some kind of amalgam of Hugh Hefner and Dean Martin in dark shades is a special kind of funny, it doesn’t compensate for all the man-hating, women-objectifying, bridezilla antics.

Matthew McConaughey, who I guess still hasn’t gotten the message that he’s a going-on 40 father now, plays Conner Mead, a photographer who actually doesn’t seem to do a lot of photography. He lives a very generous lifestyle to be sure with fast cars, nice clothes, and of course, numerous beautiful women, Life is good for Conner, which is why it’s a surprise to him that his little brother (played by Breckin Meyer) would go in for the less shallow and callous existence of a marrying man. However, once we see Lacey Chabert’s bride do a stereotypical Modern Bride flip out about some small wedding detail, I have to say that I was seeing things Conner’s way.

So because Conner is a cad and a man-whore, as the self-aware, though self-respect lacking bridesmaids recognize, Conner needs a Dickensian-style 12 step program. Do you think that when Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol 150 years ago that he had any idea that it’d be used for promoting neo-conservative jingoism and teaching commitphobe pricks the meaning of fidelity? It’s also kind of odd that the man that preaches being a jerk to women to get laid is surprised when he learns that nobody likes him because he’s a jerk. That goes double for Jenny (Jennifer Garner), the kind of adorable doctor that only exists in the movies. It always makes me laugh in these things when the leads realize that the people they’ve loved their whole lives are the people their meant to be with.

For it’s next trick, the script will invent a subplot where in the wedding is called off and Conner has to prove he’s changed by convincing the wedding party to let bygones be bygones and move forward with the ceremony. Oh, what do you know: that’s exactly what happens. Like sitting in traffic during rush hour, we wait for the inevitable final minutes where Conner wakes up, realizes the ass he’s been, saves the wedding and wins Jenny back. It’s like clockwork and you can literally see the act breaks on screen. And near the end of the ghostly vision things get deeply damn serious, which was startling for how out of place it was. The thing about Carol is that it’s always been a horror story, and I sometimes wonder just how many comedic adaptations we’ll have to get before filmmakers understand that?

But I did say it’s not all bad. Well Douglas as dear, old, and dead Uncle Wayne is hysterically just enough over the top to be enjoyable, and you can tell Douglas is loving being the smarmy, Glen Quahmire type of uncle that takes his 13-year-old nephew to a bar to give him his first lesson about women, as warped as that may be. Robert Forster was also great as the father of the bride, a dry, almost brash war vet that’s the antithesis of Uncle Wayne. Seeing those two in the same room would have been great, though not in the cards as it turned out. Ghosts isn’t a complete wash, I’ll admit, but It’s not terribly original in numerous independent respects. Managing to be clichéd in two entirely different ways is a skill of individual exception, but at the same time the complete opposite of one you need to make an intelligent romantic-comedy.