Wie durch ein Wunder

At least Zac Efron doesn't relive his experience of the dreadful film, "The Derby Stallion" (his first), which isn't nearly as good as a random game a kid might create in his backyard. "Charlie St. Cloud" is likewise a message film, but it wisely enriches the story with quirky details, charming sidetracks, and career advice, which may be completely wasted in the present economy.

The title character's name, Charlie St. Cloud (Zac Efron), by the way, may give you a not so subtle hint as to the film's latent spirituality. Charlie enters the story winning a boat race, graduating high school, and winning a scholarship to Stanford (for boating). He's tentative about leaving his small New England fishing village (the location of the story according to Ben Sherwood's novel and website), but he has high hopes for his future with the whole summer to say goodbye to the town.

In the meantime, he promises his little brother, Sam St. Cloud (Charlie Tahan), that he won't disappear like their father, and he emphasizes his promise with another: since they don't have money for expensive baseball camps, he will help Sam improve his baseball skills everyday for the duration of the summer (up until he has to enter Stanford the following fall semester). But before they can start, a sudden car accident kills both of them, with only Charlie receiving successful resuscitation. Charlie doesn't deal with his brother's loss very well. He works at a graveyard for 5 years. The graveyard job is a kind of symbolism for wasted time, lost opportunities, and the like; it probably isn't mockery against a potentially good job.

Writing about this basic premise, however, makes the story seem more emotional than it came across in the movie. Something either went wrong in the film adaptation or the filmmakers wanted to exude the type of playfulness they did in the previous collaboration between Zac Efron and the director, Burr Steers, in "17 Again". It works just to the extent that they steer clear of "The Derby Stallion", thankfully, but it drains the film of any internal complexities.

Charlie is either very messed up in the head, or he's seeing ghosts. The reason he stays at home in the graveyard is to keep his promise to his dead brother, a promise requiring him to play baseball with his brother's memory every summer. And he fears, or his brother fears, that if he stops going to the forest as promised, he'll lose his brother. He can't let go of his brother, whether the memory of him, the ghost of him, the spirit of him, or the something of him.

Talking to yourself in a forest and a graveyard has to mean something more than just the slightly corny, cute, and charming way it plays on screen. At times it seems more important for Zac Efron to get out of his shirt or, at least, get dripping wet (whether by jumping in a lake to avoid a duck attack, sliding on trashcan covers with his dead bro, or diving deep underwater to save his love interest). All his friends, or memories of them or something of them, are also good looking. Consequently, it has a few quickly developed romance scenes, but they seem like a minor focus.

Speaking of quirky little details, now to the most important question: What about those ducks? Are they still infesting the graveyard and dirtying the headstones? (Charlie battles ducks with trashcan covers and a toy airplane.) We never find out, and this has to be a rare case to waste such a comical plot point and not come back to it. As you see, the film has energy and fun, but perhaps the writers are desirous to channel the success of "The Sixth Sense" or other psychological thrillers ("A Beautiful Mind") while being afraid they might scare away a key demographic if they indulge too much. Dead people aren't the point of the movie either, though. They seem so minor they become like a mere plot gimmick. The story is about overcoming loss and finding your purpose. The tagline gives away the moral of the story: "Life is for living." (George Carlin liked to phrase it in the negative: "Life is about not dying", but he's an atheist materialist, so that won't work here.) Is Charlie's purpose to go back to boating and try to get in at Stanford? Is it to sail around the world?

At one point, Charlie asks the man who resuscitated him (Ray Liotta as Florio Ferrente), a man now with cancer, what the point of life is. He gets the response that it's about living a full one. But, if that wasn't vague enough, the man tells Charlie to do something more with his life. His divine purpose isn't to work in a graveyard, wage war with ducks, and talk to his dead/undead brother.

The movie doesn't make any definite recommendations about his future. It's either a stupid suggestion to, well, do something (perhaps following "Dead Poets Society"), or a smart suggestion to make his own choices about what to do. And specifically to accept the loss of his dead brother and not let his recurrent grief dictate his future. What if Charlie chooses to keep working in the graveyard in this bad economy? This question contains an interesting paradox, but he's not likely to make such a choice, judging from his inventive boat designs floating around his workroom.

The only problem is that not much of the discussion takes center stage in the movie. It exchanges depth for charming little details, career tips, minor romance elements, and something about ghosts/spirits/memories. It certainly isn't due to a fearful director, judging from his highly original and daring first film, "Igby Goes Down". But, in this case, we're just left wondering: What about those ducks?

I was much moved by Charlie St. Cloud and by Zac Efron in the title role. It looks like the young man is going out way beyond being a Walt Disney bubblegum poster boy for pubescent young ladies.

When we first meet Efron in the title role he looks to be a young man with a bright future. A scholarship to Stanford is his as he graduates high school from his New England coastal town where he enjoys sailing and the companionship of his younger brother Charles Tatan. The two are rabid Red Sox fans as all New England kids are brought up to be. Efron's boat is named the Splendid Splinter which everyone in New England knows is the nickname of Ted Williams. Being much older than Zac or his character, I actually remember seeing Ted play.

A cruel trick of fate puts the two of them in the path of an oncoming drunk driver. Both die, but a determined paramedic played by Ray Liotta brings Efron back.

As per an agreement they made minutes before the crash, Efron and Tatan still meet in the woods every day to play catch and work on Tatan's baseball skills. It's all Efron lives for. By some trick of fate he can communicate and see Tatan, in fact he sees all kinds of dead folks including a young man he graduated with from high school who was killed in Iraq. Efron's forgotten Stanford and he now works at the local graveyard, the better to be near the ones he identifies with.

I won't go into the rest except that Efron does learn to let the dead bury the dead. Meeting up with Amanda Crew, another sailing enthusiast does help. And Liotta now dying of cancer tells Zac that he was saved for some special purpose.

Two great lessons of life are to be learned in Charlie St. Cloud. First that we all have some kind of destiny, the trick is to find it and recognize it. The second is that some people die young and maybe are meant to so that the rest of us recognize how precious life is and not to waste it. Having lost any number of people including a sister at a young age, it's something that is always uppermost in my mind.

Charlie St. Cloud is beautifully filmed with some breathtaking sailing sequences. The performers are flawless, especially Zac Efron. One thing I will agree with other reviewers about is that I wish that the role of the mother of the St. Cloud brothers played by Kim Basinger was more fully developed. After the death of her younger son, she moves out of town and you never really learn why.

Despite that minor criticism, Charlie St. Cloud is a moving film that should be seen by all generations for the life lessons imparted.

There are many parallels to other twisty, turning, "are they alive or dead?" films of this genre that probably do it at lot better but Burr Steers effort is undeniably entertaining. He has some great acting from Charlie Tahan in particular to raise the rating a notch or two too.

The opening is neatly crafted as back story explaining how brothers Charlie (Efron) and Sam (Tahan) are as inseparable in death as in life. Fast forward five years and we have the revelation of a gift Charlie may, or may not, have. The story takes over from there as a charmingly meandering exploration of promises, principles, reasons and deeply held beliefs. Zac Efron gives a goodish but slightly uneven presentation of the "man with a mission", his own worse enemy, but also one of his word. There are moments when Efron is very convincing but there are others when he seems to be going through the motions. What Charlie Tahan succeeds in doing is taking the simple and raw and keeping it simple and raw, something Efron needs to work on.

Amanda Crew is good as the romantic interest and there are a couple of cameos from Kim Basinger and Ray Liotta.

Now I will not plot spoil to reveal the bigger flaws in the script but I was not expecting a revelation to be made in quite the way it was, and at the time was left thinking - that's stupid it should have been done differently without spoiling the story - but that is show business for you! Overall it is a worthwhile film with a reasonable point to make. I give it seven out of ten.

I like movies that are exactly as they claim to be. "Charlie St. Cloud" is just that, a romantic drama, nothing more and nothing less.

There is nothing profound, although with a few thoughtful dynamics, it's just the story of a young man (Zac Efron) unable to overcome the tragic death of his younger brother until he meets a beautiful girl who shares his same passion for sailing.

The problems are plentiful, with cringe-worthy dialogue, supporting actors who haven't yet learned how to act, no affecting drama producing few tears, and there just isn't enough to completely hold your attention. But yet, because it's a simple love story that doesn't pretend to be grandiose and doesn't force out-of-place tears, I liked "Charlie St. Cloud". I found it to be sweet, subdued and modest.

It was also the perfect choice for Zac Efron as he matures in his acting career. Sure, there are probably a few too many shots of Efron standing in his jeans and t-shirts staring into the sunset with his longing, blue eyes, but that is, of course, partly why we would watch it in the first place.

This film is about a young man who loses his younger brother to a traffic accident. He remains locked in a state of grief until he rekindles with his friend from high school.

"Charlie St. Cloud" is beautifully filmed, with great artistic scenes and amazing sceneries. Cinematography is great, and many scenes are so beautiful that they could become postcards. However, the story is not as good, it is not very engaging. I find the plot unconvincing and the story telling is rather poor. The romance Charlie and the girl develops is unconvincing and contrived, and the emotional burden and guilt of Charlie could have been explored further.