Matthew McConaughey: Shirtless Pop-Culture Punching Bag

by Linda Holmes

Remember the way people talked about Matthew McConaughey when he was in the 1996 film adaptation of John Grisham's legal thriller A Time To Kill? He was good in that movie. He got solid reviews in that movie.

That was the same summer he was in John Sayles' Lone Star. And he'd already been in the much-loved Dazed And Confused. It's not like he was racking up Oscar nominations, but the idea was certainly supposed to be: Handsome Man Who Is Also A Real Actor.

I mean ... he was in Amistad, for crying out loud.

But slowly, something changed. And not only because he unfortunately popped up in an arrest warrant in which he was credited as the "nude, white male dancing and playing bongo drums."

After the bongos, after the jump...

No, somewhere around The Wedding Planner with Jennifer Lopez in 2001, people started to say, "Oh, wait ... is he going to be that guy?"

And then he made How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days in 2003, and people said, "Ohhhh, he is that guy."

When Sahara came out in 2005, The New York Times said it was McConaughey's last chance to become Harrison Ford. He did not become Harrison Ford.

Instead, he made Failure To Launch (a.k.a. How To Lose Sarah Jessica Parker In 10 Days) and Fool's Gold (a.k.a. How To Lose Kate Hudson In 10 Additional Days), neither of which I've seen and both of which I sense I would really only enjoy at a hotel. And only if I happened to step on a sea urchin while on vacation and find myself forced to spend several days inside.

And then there was the fact that he spent a lot of time without a shirt. It's sort of fitting that A Time To Kill was maybe the sweatiest movie in history, because it became something of a theme.

By the time Fool's Gold came out, there were so many wisecracks floating around about his shirtless chest (check out this Matt Damon riff from Late Night With David Letterman) that it's honestly surprising we never reached "How many of Matthew McConaughey's shirtless chests does it take to change a light bulb?"

Despite all of this — despite the fact that he's been mocked and made fun of and equated to a golden torso only coincidentally blessed with legs and a head — McConaughey has never disappeared. Shortly after The Onion ran a story about his agreement to star in "Whatever," in fact, he gave one of the sharpest performances in Tropic Thunder, even if he was upstaged by Tom Cruise's fat suit and bald cap.

He can seem like a very odd duck at times; in this interview promoting the 2006 football drama We Are Marshall, he's very ponderous and "Wow, man," but also laughs at himself with a sort of hands-in-the-air enthusiasm it's hard not to like.

And now, he's back in a movie called Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past (opening this Friday), embracing exactly the kind of film people detest him for making. (As in this bit, which contains strong language, to say the least.)

You've got to give the guy this: He hangs in. And it's still often true that he elevates bad material so that it's ... less bad. The Girlfriends Past trailer looks positively dreadful, but his slickster grin hasn't aged in ten years. If he's sweating his passage from Potentially Serious Actor to Guy Who Makes Reviled Romantic Comedies, he doesn't show it.

[Special Bonus Question: How many shirtless chests of Matthew McConaughey does it take to change a light bulb? Your answers, in the comments.]