St. Cloud’ has a lot of gray areas
A few months ago, it might not have been the best idea when I
picked a movie solely based on its convenient time without knowing
anything about it. I had an assignment from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in
Hollister and since I live in Gilroy, it didn’t really make sense
to drive home after work. But I also didn’t really want to hang out
in the office until 7 p.m. on a Friday night. So instead, I checked
out the local movie listings to see what was playing around 5 p.m.
and would end about 6:45 p.m.
My top choice was
”
Dinner with Schmucks,
”
but I knew other people in my family wanted to see it so I
decided to wait on that one. I had two options. I could see
”
Salt,
”
the Angelina Jolie spy action movie, which started at 4:45 p.m.
But with a running time just over an hour and a half, it would
still have left me with some time to kill. So I went with
”
Charlie St. Cloud,
”
which started just after 5 p.m. and promised to fill up most of
my down time. The movie was recently released on DVD and
Blu-Ray.
St. Cloud’ has a lot of gray areas
A few months ago, it might not have been the best idea when I picked a movie solely based on its convenient time without knowing anything about it. I had an assignment from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Hollister and since I live in Gilroy, it didn’t really make sense to drive home after work. But I also didn’t really want to hang out in the office until 7 p.m. on a Friday night. So instead, I checked out the local movie listings to see what was playing around 5 p.m. and would end about 6:45 p.m.
My top choice was “Dinner with Schmucks,” but I knew other people in my family wanted to see it so I decided to wait on that one. I had two options. I could see “Salt,” the Angelina Jolie spy action movie, which started at 4:45 p.m. But with a running time just over an hour and a half, it would still have left me with some time to kill. So I went with “Charlie St. Cloud,” which started just after 5 p.m. and promised to fill up most of my down time. The movie was recently released on DVD and Blu-Ray.
I knew two things about the movie – Zac Efron was the lead in the film and his character talks to his dead brother’s ghost. So I kind of knew I was in for something that wouldn’t be spectacular.
Unfortunately, it was a lot worse than I thought it would be. The screenplay by Craig Pearce and Lewis Colick is based on a book by Ben Sherwood called “The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud.” I haven’t read the book, but I think the director Burr Steers would have done better to spend a little more time on Charlie’s (Zac Efron) death in the film.
Charlie St. Cloud is a middle class kid who lives with his single mom (Kim Basinger) and his kid brother Sam (Charlie Tahan.) He’s really into sailing and seems to beat all the privileged kids with whom he competes. He has a bright future ahead of him with a sailing scholarship at Stanford. But before that, he wants to spend time with his buddies who are headed off to the military and his sarcastic, very annoying (at least to me) younger brother. He promises Sam he will meet him everyday to practice baseball with him so his younger brother will make the All-Star team the next year.
That all changes one night when Charlie is headed to a party and his younger brother demands he drive him to a friend’s house for the night. Anyone can see what’s coming next from miles away – the brothers are in a fatal car accident.
Sam is dead on arrival, but emergency worker Florio Ferrente (Ray Liotta) refuses to give up on Charlie. He brings the teenager back to life, but he is miserable and in shock.
At the funeral for his brother, Charlie wanders off into the woods where just days before he promised to meet his brother at sunset everyday to play catch. There he finds his brother who appears more human than ghost. He’s real enough that the two can play catch and talk and touch.
Skip forward five years and Charlie never left his hometown. He has given up sailing and college. Instead, he works as a caretaker at the cemetery where his brother is buried. He even lives in the caretaker’s cottage at the cemetery. His life revolves around one thing – meeting his brother at sunset everyday. He has never missed a day.
One of the biggest problems with the movie is that when we see Charlie five years after his brother’s death, he is still only 23 or 24 – and more than that Efron’s Charlie just seems really young. You can hardly see the toll of meeting with his dead brother day after day on him. Sure, he’s closed himself off to other people, but you’d think carrying around the guilt of his brother’s death (which was not his fault) would show more in his movement, conversation and most importantly, on his face.
The other major flaw in the movie is just that the dialogue is not very good, which may or may not be the reason the acting seems so bad. Sam is little more than a caricature of an annoying little brother and Charlie himself has little personality. The scenes with the two of them just aren’t very heartfelt given that Charlie has basically sacrificed his own life for his little brother.
There is a twist in the movie when Tess Carroll (Amanda Crew,) who attended high school with Charlie, returns to town. She is trying out a new boat, one that she plans to race around the world. A love of sailing connects the two, and something more. The only tension in the movie is Charlie feeling torn between his brother and the girl.
