Charlie St Cloud: A tough decision

If there’s anything good about the movie, it’s the beautiful scenery and Efron and Amanda’s acting skills.

Movie: Charlie St Cloud

Director: Burr Steers

Writer : Craig Pearce & Lewis Colick

A romantic drama film based on Ben Sherwood's best-selling novel, the story is of Charlie's choice between keeping a promise he made to his brother, who died in a car accident, or going after the girl he loves. The film begins with alacrity when Charlie (Zac) and his younger brother Sam (Charlie) are winning a boating race with tact and teamwork.

Charlie’s innovative boating techniques also win him a scholarship at Stanford University which he couldn’t otherwise afford without a father and a full time working mother who works extra shifts to make ends meet. Efron, on the other hand, gives the moral support and mentorship that his younger brother needs when mom’s off to work. He does everything between babysitting Sam to being his friend, his baseball coach, his homework assistant and of course at more natural times, his elder brother.

The story takes a turn when Sam dies and the primary story line takes shape. Charlie chooses melancholy over Stanford and stays back to work as a caretaker at the cemetery. Keeping the promise he made to Sam when he was alive, Charlie meets his brother every day before sunset to practice baseball. This atypical pact is broken only when a striking young lady and his former sailing competitor (Amanda Crew) tries to pull Charlie back to the living.

Or does she? Nothing is quite as it seems in this mystical odyssey. What happens next is a bit unexpected. The script seems to be overwritten and the screenplay is a bit of an aching noise. If there’s anything good about the movie, it’s the beautiful scenery of British Columbia and Efron and Amanda’s acting skills.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd, 2011.