Charlie St. Cloud (**½)
Directed by: Burr Steers
Starring: Zac Efron, Charlie Tahan, Amanda Crew, Augustus Prew, Kim
Basinger, Ray Liotta, Donal Logue
Seen: November 6th 2010
**½
Out of ****
Charlie
St. Cloud (Efron) and his brother Sam (Tahan) form a great sailing team. The
movie starts with them far from the lead in a boat race, but they win because
of Charlie’s skills for which he receives a sailing scholarship to Stanford (I
was wondering, if he’s so good, would he have ever been so far behind?). Charlie
and Sam are close, and when Sam expresses worries that Charlie can’t wait to
get out of town, Charlie promises him to practice baseball for an hour every
day at sunset.
Things
don’t always turn out the way they’re supposed to, and Charlie and Sam are in a
car accident in which they both die. Paramedic Florio Ferrente (Liotta) refuses
to give up though, and manages to revive Charlie, and now it turns out that
Charlie can see dead people. Running away into the forest from Sam’s funeral
when asked to drop the baseball glove on Sam’s casket, Charlie stumbles and the
baseball rolls away, and then back – Sam’s there waiting for Charlie to
practice with him.
Cut
to five years later, and Charlie is still living in his hometown, having
reneged his Stanford scholarship. He’s the cemetery caretaker, and he also speaks
to more ghosts than just his brother. The whole town believes Charlie is
certifiable. He is strange and uninvolved, having only one certain dedication –
being in the forest every day at sunset to play catch with Sam. That is until
he meets Tess Carroll (Crew), a sailor planning on going around the world, and
as he falls for her his suddenly rather demanding brother accuses him of
already forgetting about him (when Charlie doesn’t miss, but comes late for ONE
of their meetings in five years…). Charlie and Tess grow closer, and when
Charlie sits in a pub with his eccentric friend Alistair (Prew) one night, he
gets a pretty wild surprise, which I’ll not spoil for anyone still planning on
seeing the movie, but which leads to some suspense and some heroic actions as
Charlie sets out on a rescue mission at sea.
I
won’t say Charlie St. Cloud left me cold, even though it tried hard. The
relationship between Charlie and Sam was effectively started, and the loss of a
(my) brother is unthinkable in its horror, something the movie brought across
in a quiet and understated way. What happens with the story after the tragedy
turns it to melodramatic mush unfortunately, and some sequences nearer to the
end limp toward the finishing line in lame duck fashion. Zac Efron is not a bad
actor, and he effectively does what the script requires of him while adding a
level of charm and confidence, he carries the movie. Kim Basinger as Charlie
and Sam’s mother does what she’s been doing in recent years, slowly disappearing
into obscurity with a largely anonymous role which could have gone to almost
any unknown actress. Charlie Tahan is in part good as cocky Sam and in part
annoying as demanding and whiny Sam, while Amanda Crew is sweet as Charlie’s
love interest but also falls to a level where her injured and nearly dying
character actually utters the words “I’m so cold”. I thought that line had
turned comedic ages ago.
Charlie
St. Cloud is not as good as Zac Efron’s previous outing, 17 Again, and while it
is not a bad movie, it does pile on the cheese a few layers too thick after
starting out with definite promise. Luckily I took my little sister to go see
it, and we had a good time…
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