In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, I can fully understand how a lifetime of bitter hate against the poor is undone in one evening, thanks to three life-changing ghosts. However, with Mark Waters’ terrible Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, I find it extremely hard to believe that Matthew McConaughey will change his never-ending pussy-pooling ways, thanks to an extremely similar haunting.

Basically what passed as a romantic comedy before the era of #MeToo, the muscular Matthew plays Connor Mead, a womanizing photographer speaking dialogue totally filled with nothing but the sleaziest of come-ons that, if not being delivered by McConaughey, would easily venture into sexual harassment and, quite possibly, date-rape territory. It seems that he turned out this way because his parents died when he was 7 and left him with elder whore Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas); do you have ample-enough pity for him yet?

Turns out that this weekend, his grating brother, Paul (the grating Breckin Meyer), is getting married to the irritating Sandra (the irritating Lacey Chabert). Connor shows up already erect and ready to plow through a few drunken bridesmaids, unaware that his childhood sweetheart, Jenny (Jennifer Garner), is there — with whom he had already pumped and dumped — but who cares, because she secretly loves the scamp.

As you can probably imagine, that night he’s visited by three girlfriends, all of whom he attempts multiple times to sleep with, including a 16-year-old Emma Stone. Condoms full of semen drop from the sky at one point, among one of the more grotesque ideas of “romantic” humor in this dreadfully painful flick.

Director Waters, by the way, made other bad films like Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Vampire Academy and Just Like Heaven, wherein a ghostly Reese Witherspoon haunts a forlorn Mark Ruffalo. I haven’t seen it, but judging from the trailer, I’m sure it’s sexually horrific as well. —Louis Fowler

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Although a copycat of AIP’s Beach Party series that AIP eventually scooped up for distribution, It’s a Bikini World stands out for another reason: being the only movie of its kind to be directed by a woman — for the record, Roger Corman protege Stephanie Rothman (Terminal Island). She also co-wrote the screenplay with the producer, Charles S. Swartz, who happened to be her husband.

Pinch-hitting in the Frankie and Annette roles are teen-pic staples Tommy Kirk and Deborah Walley, reteamed from the previous year’s The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. On the beach, Mike (Kirk) is instantly attracted to the new-in-town Delilah (Walley), but she’s just as quickly put off by his braggadocio vibe of entitled swordsman. Overhearing Delilah tell pal Pebbles (Suzie Kaye, Women of the Prehistoric Planet) she prefers men to have brains, Mike dons a disguise of glasses and bowtie to pass himself off as his nonexistent nerdy brother, Herbert.

By gum, it works! Delilah starts falling for Herbert while challenging Mike to races in hopes of chipping away at his massive alpha-male ego. Meanwhile, Herbert — er, I mean, Mike — is faced with the dilemma fueling so many sitcom reruns in perpetual syndication: how to show up to one place as two people! It culminates in a 12-event, battle-of-the-sexes competition that finds Delilah and Mike racing one another using various vehicles (skateboards, boats, camels) and driving a motorcycle through an automated car wash. Each event is introduced with smilin’ Sid Haig (Spider Baby) twirling semaphore flags.

While Bikini World is built upon the subgenre’s tried-and-true teen themes, it also doesn’t quite have the off-the-shelf interchangeability of other beachsploitation efforts. The first giveaway comes in the first scene, as a trio of sunglasses in close-up relays frames (no pun intended) composed with true forethought. Oh, the flick is still frothy, but Rothman has infused it with an artfulness — pop and otherwise — and a feminist attitude among all the pulchitrude. If only she didn’t have to ditch the uniqueness in the film’s final seconds!

Possibly because the film came out in the trough of the beach-movie cycle, it boasts arguably the least square music performances from today’s vantage point — in particular The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” and The Castaways’ “Liar Liar.” Not even the sight of Bobby “Boris” Pickett (as in “Monster Mash”) dancing to tunes while wearing a comically oversized hat can kill the good taste. —Rod Lott

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In the early ’90s, all of your favorite comedians from Saturday Night Live were busy in the theaters making their feature film debuts to varying degrees; but, if you ask me, the more interesting movies were coming for the gang at In Living Color, with its second most popular star Damon Wayans hitting hard with The Last Boy Scout, Blankman and the mostly forgotten Mo’ Money.

Based on Wayans’ popular street-hustler catchphrase, this cinematic incarnation still finds him on the street, trying to make dollars with his real-life brother Marlon. Together, they rip off marks for televisions and other high-ticket items, usually while in now-offensive characters like a homeless man, a mentally handicapped man or a very homosexual man.

When he meets the stunning Amber (the still-stunning Stacey Dash), Wayans decides he’s going to fly right and work hard at the most important credit card firm in history; when temptation strikes and he steals a few cards, however, that’s when he’s lured into a badly envisioned criminal ring of credit conmen who use murder to solve all of their problems.

When Mo’ Money lets Wayans do his comedic thing, it’s a very funny movie. But, for some reason, with about 30 or so minutes left to go, it becomes a highly disjointed, tonally erratic action film, one that never recovers as he chases the bad guys in typical ’90s mode, sans, strangely enough, any wisecracks at their deathly expense.

Directed by Peter MacDonald, perhaps best known for the execrable Rambo III, the only thing that this flick had going for it during its original release was the platinum new jack soundtrack, featuring five hits, including the Janet Jackson/Luther Vandross smash “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” which was inescapable for a while.

A few years later, sketch-show cast members would cross paths when Wayans and Adam Sandler starred in Bulletproof, which was only funny for a can’t-repeat-here joke about Disneyland. —Louis Fowler

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Roger Corman never met a Hollywood blockbuster he couldn’t rip off (and I mean that lovingly). With Munchies, the legendary producer didn’t just ride the coattails of former employee Joe Dante’s Gremlins; he doubled down, hiring the editor of Gremlins, Tina Hirsch, to helm this quickie, and casting Dante regulars Wendy Schaal, Robert Picardo and Paul Bartel in bit parts, perhaps hoping for quality by association.

None of that made any difference. Carnosaur, this ain’t. (To composer Ernest Troost’s credit, his score doesn’t steal from Gremlins. Because it’s too busy pilfering Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.)

Anyway, in Munchies (not based on the Frito-Lay snack), archeologist Simon Watterman (Harvey Korman, Mel Brooks’ good-luck charm) returns from Peru with a gremlin ghoulie critter troll spookie hobgoblin squatty little creature that he smuggles into America via gym bag. Before a screwballian round of sex with novelty props, Simon’s loser adult son (Charlie Stratton, Summer Camp Nightmare) and his girlfriend (Nadine Van der Velde, Moving Violations) justify the title by calling the, er, thing a “munchie,” on account of its voracious, fridge-be-damned appetite, and naming it “Arnold,” because it’s 1987.

When Simon has to leave town, his slimy brother, mini-golf magnate Cecil (also Korman, but with a Bob Goulet mustache), tries to steal Arnold. Cecil’s scared stoner stepson, Dude (Jon Stafford, Full Metal Jacket), stops playing hacky sack long enough to slice Arnold into pieces, which only makes more Arnolds (à la The Gate). Ergo, Corman gets his PG-rated plural Munchies; havoc, ye shall be wreaked!

Provided it sounds fun at all, it is not as much fun as it sounds — the primary reason being this immutable fact: The munchies were designed without points of articulation, which qualifies as more stuffed animal than puppet; a sock slipped over your hand displays more action. Someone just out of frame moves the mini-monsters left and/or right and/or up in the air — whatever slapstick gag the script (by Barbarian Queen II’s Lance Smith) calls for, whether trying to shotgun an old lady or peering up young ladies’ skirts. Unrelated to their shenanigans, the comedy is desperate at best, and from Starsky & Hutch to S&H Green Stamps, the typical joke feels stale by half an acid-washed generation. —Rod Lott

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White nerds like to loudly announce that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the greatest self-contained film series in movie history, but, you know, I’ve always found Tyler Perry’s Madea-verse to be a far richer tableau of real-life heroes and villains, with plenty of Christian-based dramedy-heavy life lessons sprinkled throughout the course of these 11 films, as well as plenty of stage plays set in the same continuity.

In A Madea Family Funeral, the supposed final film, Madea (Tyler Perry) and elderly friends Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis) and Hattie Mae (Patrice Lovely), as well as pervy Uncle Joe (Perry again), in between bragging about smoking weed and whoring around, walk in on the dead body of a family friend in the middle of coitus, leading to many, many jokes about the deceased’s engorged member.

But, really, that’s only the initial premise for this relatable morality play about familial deception and brotherly jealously, alternating between lowbrow comedy and high-heavens preaching which, in Perry’s films, always works well, even if the movies have continued on with diminishing returns, at least plot-wise — I mean, have you seen Boo 2! A Madea Halloween 2?

Probably not.

For me, though, Madea is still in top comedic form here, fucking with everything in her way from racist white cops high on pulling the trigger to the stereotypical length of most black funerals; it’s a self-made formula that has commercially pleased audiences for about 15 years now, except for white nerds, of course.

To paraphrase a once-popular saying, make mine Madea! —Louis Fowler

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