Matthew McConaughey and His Stupid Smug Face

While watching the trailer for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, an inane new romantic comedy spin on A Christmas Carol, I was struck for the umpteenth time by how much I wanted to punch Matthew McConaughey in his stupid smug face.

It's an urge which has existed within me for quite some time now. Having moved on from his attempts to be like an actor and stuff, McConaughey decided to regurgitate the same tired, tanned persona in a series of films aimed towards women who drink Lambrini and actually listen to Ronan Keating without throwing up.

These films usually start with McConaughey playing an attractive, successful, attractive, slick, attractive Lothario who women not only adore but would gladly throw themselves under trains just to catch him in the buff. He is then confronted by a vivacious, but not very attractive, woman who changes him etc.

For McConaughey, acting seems to be a public form of masturbation where he reaffirms to audiences that yes he is attractive and yes women do want him. When confronted with a new script, his agent must insist that at least 5 people in every scene comment on how hard his stomach is or how well-developed his calf muscles are. To those of us who are immune to his questionable charms, it's all incredibly tiresome.

This formula seems to be alive and well in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a film aggressively plastered over bus-sides in London. This means a simple walk to Tesco can become clouded by a gruesome daydream where I giddily extract every single one of McConaughey's teeth before drowning him.

In the trailer we see him dump three women via a webcam while a new squeeze is already in his apartment. See women are clearly vacant fuckwits who choose sex with an orange, preening Ken doll over possessing any dignity or self-worth. Good job there's a vivacious woman around the corner to sort that womaniser out...

What he desperately needs is a film where he doesn't play the man about town and doesn't feel the need to take his shirt off at every available opportunity. He needs to play a horribly disfigured creep that lives under a bridge and eats his own feces in front of disgusted passers-by. He needs to shave his hair off and replace it with pipe cleaners. He needs to pile on the pounds and tattoo himself with nonsensical Looney Tunes characters.

It could still be a romantic comedy. He could fall in love with a shoe or a tree or a magazine. Maybe then, maybe after the grin had finally disappeared, I would stop feeling the need to punch his face. Or, even better, the finale of the movie could be me repeatedly thumping him for every rom-com flavoured atrocity he has ever committed (the very thought of Failure to Launch makes me worry that the violence may never ever end).

So Matthew McConaughey's agent I implore you to search scripts such as this out. Your target audience of Baileys-drinking women won't love him as much when he starts to age. But for those who like to see some grit and genuine ugliness, hobo him up and force-feed him some cakes. We'll stick around once the tan has faded.