The Womanizer - The night of the ex-girlfriends
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Womanizer - The night of the ex-girlfriends |
| Original title | Ghosts of Girlfriends Past |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2009 |
| length | 100 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mark Waters |
| script |
Jon Lucas , Scott Moore |
| production |
Brad Epstein , Jonathan Shestack |
| music | Rolfe Kent |
| camera | Daryn Okada |
| cut | Bruce Green |
| occupation | |
| |
The Womanizer - The night of the ex-girlfriends (Original title: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past ) is a comedy film from 2009 by director Mark Waters with Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner in the lead roles.
action
Connor Mead is a well-known celebrity photographer and notorious for his numerous and brief affairs. His selfish and unemotional way of dealing with women, for example, leads to him breaking up with three women on a conference call at the same time while he is busy with a new affair. When the wedding of his younger brother Paul and his future wife Sandra is due the next day, he arrives just in time for the dress rehearsal of the wedding at the property of his deceased uncle Wayne.
After Connor made derogatory comments about the wedding at the rehearsal dinner, he goes to the bathroom and meets his late uncle Wayne. He wants to warn him not to commit the same mistake as himself and to waste his life. He also explains to him that he will meet three more ghosts that evening, which will make him feel things that he has not felt for a long time.
After Wayne disappears, he thinks it is all his imagination, but when he gets to his room, he encounters the ghost of his past girlfriends: Allison, with whom he had sex for the first time. It takes him back to his childhood in 1982, when he met his first great love Jenny and the year after his parents were killed in a car accident. After that, he is shown his time in middle school.
Back in the present, Connor accidentally destroys the wedding cake and then meets the ghost of the current girlfriends: Mel, his assistant. After Connor reveals that his brother Paul slept with one of the bridesmaids years ago, Paul is upset and asks Connor to leave.
Connor runs out of the house and calls for the ghost of the future girlfriends. The ghost leads him into the future to the wedding of his childhood sweetheart Jenny, who marries Brad, whom she had met at Paul's planned wedding. Connor tries to prevent this, but as a ghost he cannot do anything. On going out he sees his brother Paul and realizes that he has not married and is single. Later you see how the aged Paul is the only person at Connor's funeral. Connor realizes that nobody will miss him in the future. He wants to change and wakes up back in the present on his brother's wedding day.
Everything is being dismantled there because the bride has canceled the wedding. She just drove away with the bridesmaids and her father. Connor rushes after and tries to prevent Sandra from making the same mistake and running away from love and the pain that is often associated with it, as he did with his great love Jenny. Connor finally manages to change Sandra's mind. In the end, Connor confesses his love to Jenny and asks her to give him another chance. Both dance to the same song (REO Speedwagon "Keep on loving you"), to which Jenny once danced at the school party with a strange boy, which hurt Connor so much at the time that he no longer allowed any feelings and the change to a heartless womanizer accomplished.
background
- The plot is based on the first published 1843 Christmas story ( A Christmas Carol ) by Charles Dickens . This is also made clear in the original English title Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which makes reference to the first ghost in Dickens' story ( Ghost of Christmas Past , in the German version: Spirit of Christmas Past ).
- Singer Kalia is played by Christina Milian in the film . Your name is not mentioned in the credits.
- The film grossed around 102 million US dollars in cinemas worldwide, including around 55 million US dollars in the USA and 6.9 million US dollars in Germany.
- The cinema release in the USA was on May 1, 2009, in Germany on May 28, 2009.
Reviews
“Mark Waters [..] tells it as a nice little story, perhaps without great ambitions, but resists the temptation to fall into typical American prudish. A vehicle for his star Matthew McConaughey, who has clearly had his teeth bleached once too often and yet developed a very special charm: the hollow Hollywood beau, that's him; and you can see here that he knows it is time to reinvent himself again. "
"The double row of beautiful women, which seems to continue endlessly in a scene in the background, is therefore representative of the entire film: a pure male fantasy."
“It looks like the face of the young father and Matthew McConaughey, who was sometimes a heartthrob, had to endure some corrections. There is hardly any other way of explaining the plump, toddler-like apple cheeks in the slightly wrinkled and, not least because of this, strangely ambiguous face. [..] We follow the unmotivated purification of the hero, which at no time comes close to truthfulness or credibility, with increasing disgruntlement. How one can quote the wonderful template by Dickens with the necessary respect, the makers could easily have copied from another, much more successful cinema version of the material: the 'Muppets Christmas Story'. Better still, 'The Womanizer' would have been completely cast with the Muppet dolls. "
“Well, what follows is as predictable as it is lame. It goes on a ghost trip towards the past, present and future to demonstrate Connor's inability to bond. Aha. But: What should be interesting about watching an extremely unsympathetic womanizer at work for a long time? Answer: It's just neither interesting nor anywhere funny, pointed or otherwise entertaining. It's just stupid. [..] The German title punchline 'Der Womanizer' is and will remain the only funny one here. "
“Charles Dickens' Christmas story has been filmed so many times that one more time won't do much harm. Although this experienced Matthew McConaughey comedy contains some nice gags and a brilliant cast idea. As the first visitor from the afterlife, Michael Douglas pulls out all the stops of an aging bon vivant and appears so happy that he drives away the spirits of sentimentality with a light hand. "
“Superficial and predictable fantasy comedy based loosely on Charles Dickens' 'Christmas Story'. Instead of conveying sadness about missed opportunities in life, the film gets lost in shallow gags, the lack of ideas of which is seldom compensated for by original visual ideas or ironic refractions. "
Web links
- The Womanizer - The Night of the ex-girlfriends in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Womanizer - The night of the ex-girlfriends at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Official website for the film (German)
- Official site for the film (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Womanizer - The Night of Ex-Girlfriends on taz.de; accessed on July 14, 2019
- ↑ Financial data on the film
- ↑ Film review The Emotional Coaster
- ↑ Film review film-dienst 11/2009 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ McConaughey's film review is "Not a frog you like to kiss"
- ↑ Hans-Ulrich Pönack on a moral slam from Hollywood
- ↑ McConaughey's film review is "The Womanizer"
- ↑ The Womanizer - The Night of Ex-Girlfriends in the Lexicon of International Films
