12A • 100 mins • 1 May

Director: Mark Waters

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Michael Douglas, Emma Stone, Noureen DeWulf, Breckin Meyer

Rating:

This lowbrow comedy raises two questions. One: why release an update of A Christmas Carol in May? Two: can anything of Dickens’s classic survive in a film so cynical, sleazy and hypocritical that “humbug” would be an understatement? The answer: yes, but barely.

Matthew McConaughey is Connor, a glamour photographer for whom supermodel girlfriends are ten-a-penny (we see him dump three at once by conference call.) In the real world, any sane human of either sex would nut him in ten seconds, but such are the ways of romcom. Summoned to his brother’s wedding, Connor is given the Scrooge treatment, with ghostly women guiding him through his past life to make him realise what love is.

Let’s be clear; this is trash, not very funny and sometimes jaw-droppingly insulting. It’s full of bimbos who want to drop their knickers for McConaughey, whose harem lifestyle is celebrated even as it’s supposedly condemned. McConaughey himself is a smug and slimy presence. Michael Douglas slums it in the Marley role as Connor’s late lothario uncle, who corrupted our “hero.” If Douglas had taken the Scrooge part instead, it might have been more fun.

So what saves the film from “toxic” status? It’s lively, Jennifer Garner’s sturdy performance as McConaughey’s lifelong sweetheart helps, and there’s a slapstick bit with a collapsing wedding cake. But it’s also because there’s a strong enough story trajectory (stolen, of course), to make this into a merely bad film. Somehow, it’s possible to buy into the travestied, often incoherent fairytale – even a super-schmaltzy plot point about a photograph from the past – without ever believing in the obnoxious lead actor. Proof that Dickens can survive anything, from muppets to morons.

Andrew Osmond