How long do you hang on to the memory of a deceased loved one? In the book, it was 13 years; the movie was only 5 but that is 5 years of hanging on too long. The movie is Charlie St. Cloud starring Zac Efron. For 5 years Charlie holds onto his younger brother who died in a car accident while Charlie was driving. For 5 years, Charlie plays catch everyday at sunset with the ghost of his brother and his own life gets put on hold. That life included a boating/racing scholarship to Stanford and an amazing future in the racing world. But he gave all of that up for a promise he made to his little brother. Then (as per most stories like this) a girl who is another boat racer walks into Charlie’s life and he has to choose between the promise he made to Sam and possibly the woman of his dreams.
Letting go is probably one of the hardest things to do, especially when you have to let go of someone that you hold dear and don’t want to forget about. The predicament here is that no matter what Charlie decides, he has to let go of something that is dear to him: his brother or his lifelong dream. He chooses letting go of his lifelong dream but the repercussions of that decision is that he stops living himself. So the next question that comes to mind is how do you keep a hold of a memory without sacrificing the living? For Charlie, he doesn’t find the balance until a girl from his past comes back to remind him of what living is all about.
SPOILERS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
This movie surprised me – surprised me that Zac Efron could take on this role and be believable as a battered and torn brother who feels guilty over his younger brother’s death. I was expecting a bare-chested Efron to strut his six-pack and not much more. After the scene where his brother dies, as the viewer I became immersed in the story and focused on learning how Efron was going to come out of this turmoil that he was thrown into. The most interesting scenes came when Efron was talking to his high school buddy in the cemetery that he looks after and his scenes with Tess, a high school classmate who shares his passion for boat racing. With his buddy in the cemetery, the viewer is let into another part of Charlie that if you had never read the book or knew the storyline before (that was me) you would not have known about – he can see the ghosts of people he knows. It is revealed that the buddy he is talking to died in the war and they are standing over his grave. Then he meets Tess and she gives him an idea of the life he is missing because of his guilt over his brother’s death. Little do we know that from the moment he found her sleeping at her father’s grave with the cut on her head, she has been going in and out of consciousness out in the ocean after taking her boat out into a storm. That twist was the turning point for me in whether or not I liked this movie. Up until that point, the movie was good and predictable. The boy meets a girl who helps him see what he is missing and he starts to see the world in a different light. But I never saw the Tess dead twist at all. It was something that turned the story from a predictable, cheesy romance-drama to a supernatural romance-drama which is much more up my alley. I am a sucker for anything supernatural and this was no exception.
As I said before, I was pleasantly surprised with Efron’s acting skills and his performance. It showed that he does have something else up his sleeve than a singing and dancing career going.
The movie gets a 4.5 out of 5 stars.
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