Charlie St. Cloud

 After watching Charlie St. Cloud I was left with a desire to take sailing lessons and a craving for fish and chips. Once I had my fish and chips, I was done. Unless you are a twelve-year-old girl or a big Zac Efron fan, there is little to enjoy in this film. I loved the scenery and the photography was beautiful, but the story had so many gaps that it drove me crazy. 
 
Zac Efron (High School Musical) plays Charlie St. Cloud, a townie in a rich eastern seaboard yachting village. Growing up in this small myopic sailing port, Charlie knows everything about sailing and sailboats. He has recently won a big race and subsequently a sailing scholarship to go to Stanford. His younger brother Sam (Charlie Tahan) is going to miss his older brother. But Charlie promises to practice baseball with him everyday until he leaves for college. It is never explained why Charlie takes promises so seriously. As far as his relationship with his brother, we have to glean it through a montage and a series of short scenes. Basically the filmmaker is asking us to take his word for it that Sam and Charlie are close. 
 
My biggest problem in this film is the relationships. Zac never seems to connect with any of these people, yet we are supposed to believe that he has a best friend (Augustus Prew) who keeps inviting him out even though he never responds. And that in a mere five years he has gone from town hero to a cemetery recluse. The girls in town still think he’s cute but they either believe that he is weird, strange or misunderstood. 
 
Since all of Charlie’s peers have gone off to college and his mom has moved away for reasons unexplained, Charlie spends all his time caring for the local cemetery and designs sailboats in his solitary evenings, which is strange because his own boat has not been in the water for five years. This too is not explained. Charlie lost his brother in a car accident, not a boating accident so I don’t understand his aversion to water. But this is par for the course; there are a lot of holes in this story. 
 
One day while Charlie is trying to chase geese off of the grounds a young woman appears to complain about the state of her father’s grave. Charlie doesn’t recognize her right away, but she came in right behind him in his famous yachting race. Tess (Amanda Crew) has taken her inheritance and has outfitted herself with a first class yacht in which she intends to sail around the world. Equipped with a sailing coach and several corporate sponsors, Tess will be leaving for an around the world jaunt in a matter of weeks. She invites Charlie to be on her crew, but he turns her down. Everyday at sunset he plays baseball with his dead brother, a promise is a promise. 
 
Charlie St. Cloud is a sappy movie that never once touched or moved me. And what makes me even madder is how the film wasted the talents of Kim Basinger, Ray Liotta and Donal Logue. They were severely underused and as played, anyone could have done their roles. Again, we were left to fill in many of the relational gaps. 
 
If you are a twelve-year-old girl or a Zac Efron fan he has plenty of screen time and luxurious close-ups. I will even admit that he is not a bad actor. But if you need a well-constructed script with your eye candy I would pass on this film. I have a feeling that the book is much more satisfying. Read it instead and buy a copy with Zac’s picture on the cover. That way you will have the best of both worlds. If you still want to see the film, I say save your money and rent it. This way you can freeze frame on his wet t-shirt shot and fast forward through the extraneous stuff. I believe that Zac Efron has potential as an actor, he just needs a deceit script and a director that will bring it out.

Rating: Rent It A sappy story with pretty people in it