Charlie St. Cloud

Zac Efron has potential for sure. He was good in 17 Again, great in Me and Orson Welles, and pretty damned funny when he hosted Saturday Night Live. But his participation in this sentimental dreck takes him down a few notches on the cool scale. He portrays the title character, an avid sailor with a big career ahead of him. When out driving with his little bro, Sam (Charlie Tahan), his car gets hit, and Sam is killed. Before Sam dies, Charlie makes some oath to throw a baseball around with him every night, and he does this with Sam’s ghost, who is in some sort of “in between” like the dudes on Lost. Charlie gets a girlfriend (Amanda Crew) who also likes sailing, and something utterly predictable and stupid happens to her. The film is just another cloying, dopey supernatural hodgepodge full of inconsistencies, impossibilities and emotional goop. Efron is fine here, but the material is trash, a completely unsatisfying mess. Avoid at all costs.