New on DVD: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

He collects women like a 6-year-old boy collects rocks: He picks them up, pockets them and forgets all about them until he hears them rattle in the washing machine. He woos conquests by the bushel and breaks their hearts in bulk, splitting up with them three at a time via video conference calls.

"I love all women," he tells a few of his used-once, lightly worn acquisitions. "That's the problem here."

Connor wasn't born this way. He was made. Orphaned as a child, he was raised by his Uncle Wayne, a man who makes Hugh Hefner look like a Jonas brother. "I can't teach you algebra or camping, or even ethics," Wayne told him. But, with a Ph.D. in philandering, Wayne was the ultimate tutor in womanizing. He took Connor to his first singles bar when the lad was just about 14. He taught him the cheesiest pickup lines ... and how to treat women like dirt and make them love it.

"The power of the relationship comes from whoever wants it less," he tells Connor.

That nugget became Connor's lifelong motto, and he feels it's served him well. Until, that is, he shows up at his late Uncle Wayne's bachelor mansion for his brother's wedding and runs into his dearly departed guardian. Wayne goes all Jacob Marley on Connor and tells him he'll be haunted by three ghosts who will show him the error of his libidinous ways. It'll be painful, Wayne cautions, but it'll be for your own good.

"The stuff that's not for your own good?" Wayne adds. "It's for my entertainment."

Charles Dickens would be soooo proud.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is sweet--in a horrible, soul-sapping sort of way.

For folks who've come to believe sex before marriage is normative and healthy, this film does offer a message: Chase after sex to the exclusion of all else, and you'll wind up lonely and alone. Love, not sex, is the real deal.

But for happily married men like me, who love the whole promise ring concept and might think (fleetingly) of doing routine background checks on our daughters' dates, this story has problems.

Sure, Connor falls in love with Jenny--but he realizes it only after they've had sex.

Sure, he promises Jenny at the end of the film that, from now on, he'll be around whenever she wakes up--but he doesn't marry her.

Sure, he learns his promiscuous lifestyle is bankrupt of meaning--but the film seems unconvinced by its own ideas. Connor, we see, is a libido legend, adored by women and admired by men. Awed, a best man of Paul's tells Connor that it's "an honor to be serving with you." Connor's first sexual conquest tells him that being his first makes her feel like Neil Armstrong.

Even Uncle Wayne, the supposed tragic Marley figure in this crass unraveling of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," doesn't come across as particularly repentant: He warns Connor that he doesn't want to end up like him ... even as he oozes through the movie with a greasy charm, reminiscing about the good ol' days.

In Dickens' original tale, Ebenezer Scrooge is overwhelmed with remorse, appalled at how he's wasted his life pursuing cold, hard cash. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past offers no such revelations. Rather, the tone is more along the lines of "Oops! I've had my fun. Guess it's time to grow up now." It reminds me of St. Augustine's youthful prayer: "Lord, give me chastity and continence--but not yet."

At one point, Connor's assistant says that Connor is like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz: "Born without a heart." If we're charitable, perhaps we can say that the great and terrible wizard finally gives Connor his heart in the end.

But the film? It's still looking for one.