CHARLIE ST. CLOUD

Charlie St. Cloud made me cry. More than once. It tugged at exactly the right heartstrings. But is it a good movie? Erm, not really.

Teen heartthrob Zac Efron tries to stretch his dramatic wings in this weepie, starring as the titular high-school rowing champ, whose life comes to a screeching halt when he’s in a car accident that kills his little brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan). Stricken with grief, Charlie gives up a scholarship and stays in his small northwest town, working as a caretaker at the local cemetery where, as it happens, he also meets up with Sam’s ghost every night at sunset to play catch.

But an unexpected riptide arrives in the form of one-time classmate Tess (Amanda Crew, who’s a dead ringer for Molly Ringwald), now a world-class sailing star intent on circumnavigating the globe solo. When the two reconnect, a new spark ignites in Charlie, and suddenly hanging out with the spectre of Sam gets second-billing... forcing our dreamy hero to think long and hard about what exactly he wants to do with his life.

For a while, and on a superficial level, the movie works, and at around the 70-minute mark a nice twist is thrown in... only to go from cool to ridiculous only 10 minutes after that. What unspools in the film’s final quarter is obviously meant to achieve a Ghost-level degree of tear-jerking but, instead, actually elicited snickers and giggles from the audience. There’s always an underlying sense the filmmakers don’t fully trust the material, or don’t dare make it seemingly less palatable for the teen-girl audience they’re clearly trying to reel in, so Charlie is frequently reduced to... well, being wet and brooding.

Despite his pretty-boy looks, Zac Efron turns in a decent performance. He’s not headed for Oscar with his work here, but he’s also not headed for the Razzies. Supporting players Tahan and Crew are solid, but neither one is really compelling enough to make Charlie’s heartbreak in either direction truly believable. Kim Basinger shows up in a pointless cameo as Charlie’s mom, and the two strongest actors in the cast – Ray Liotta (as a dying paramedic) and Donal Logue (as Tess’s coach) are terribly underused. Liotta’s character, especially, practically screams out for more screen time, but is relegated to all of two scenes.

All this said, there are some nice moments in Charlie St. Cloud and some flashes of genuine emotion that will probably cause more than a few sniffles. I fully admit to being a giant sap, and I sobbed at points, so I’m not really one to lob any “this movie was lame!” stones in its direction. It is what it is, and I have a strong feeling the legions of Zac Efron fans queuing up for tickets will be more than satisfied with what they see.