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Charlie St. Cloud is a noble, good-natured mess of a movie. Its heart always seems to be in the right place. Its brain, unfortunately, is always somewhere else.
Charlie marks the next step in Zac Efron's evolution, the latest attempt to prove that the handsome and effortlessly magnetic young actor can survive outside of the effervescent ensembles he led through three High School Musical films and the winning Hairspray remake. Last year's 17 Again demonstrated Efron's decent comedic chops. Charlie -- helmed by 17 Again director Burr Steers -- is meant to show the actor's sentimental side, as well as his considerable dramatic range.
And to his credit, Efron does everything in his power to untie the knots and plug the holes in the woeful St. Cloud script -- an adaptation of Ben Sherwood's novel "The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud." Yet he's ultimately overwhelmed by the film's bizarre combination of sailing, sibling relationships, supernatural powers, restless spirits, and a St. Jude medallion cherished by the least effective paramedic in movie-making history.
Efron plays Charlie, a blue-collar teen whose life is as close to perfect as one could hope. True, his dad skipped town years prior and he has yet to find the right girl, but Charlie looks like Zac Efron (bonus!) and the heavens shine just enough light upon his chiseled shoulders to justify his saintly surname. He's a loyal son to single mom Claire (Kim Basinger), a stand-up big brother to his mop-headed sibling, Sam (Charlie Tahan), and an ace sailor who's heading to Stanford on a partial scholarship in the fall.
I want to protect this film's secrets. I really do. Because if you happen to find yourself watching Charlie St. Cloud, either in a theater now or in the comforts of your own home later, it's preferable that you be surprised by the film's unpredictable -- yet largely unexplained -- plot twists. The film establishes some fantastical rules regarding our world and the afterlife, rules which stretch the limits of reality. Charlie just isn't intelligent enough to follow them.
At the same time, I desperately want to dismiss Charlie St. Cloud for what it is: a melodramatic and hopelessly disorganized feature-length episode of CBS's "The Ghost Whisperer" that trots out an exhausted Sixth Sense escape clause after painting itself into one too many narrative corners. When the action inevitably shifts to the ocean, Efron turns to Steers for a life raft. Instead, he gets a steady stream of trite bon mots like, "You can't put life on hold, Charlie. It doesn't wait for you."
That's good advice. Here's some more. Don't wait for a movie as indecisive and schizophrenic as this.
