Charlie St. Cloud - 10th June 2014

Tuesday Night is Film Night is having another Zac Efron night, as he stars in this week's film;

Charlie St. Cloud

Oh lordy lordy! How does one start a review of this film? It was really great on many levels, but it could also be classed as being pretty bad on many other levels as well. It is a unique story in a way, but it is also a mish-mash of many other stories rolled into one. It's almost beyond genre classification, dealing with romance, fantasy, supernatural overtones and drama. Let us leave it like that for now and put some facts into it, then we'll return to the critique.

Based on the book by Ben Sherwood; The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, Zac Efron takes the lead as Charlie St. Cloud; an accomplished young sailor whose life is ahead of him as he secures a college scholarship that should take him away from his sleepy Pacific Northwest hometown. Kim Basinger stars as Charlie's mother and Charlie Tahan plays his younger brother; Sam. The drama kicks off early in the story, as Charlie survives a tragic accident, involving himself and Sam. The upshot of this tragedy is that Charlie starts to see life in a new and unique way. The plot takes on another turn when his high-school classmate Tess (Amanda Crew) returns home unexpectedly. Charlie is then torn between maintaining a promise he made to Sam five years earlier and possibly moving forward with a new found love interest in the form of Tess.

Needless to say putting too much detail into the synopsis will spoil the story, so we'll leave it there, however Charlie and Sam move forward together, trying to make sense of the past, present and future.

We said that it was great on many levels, that is true. The story is unique to a degree, it is also full of drama, suspense and twists, which always lends itself to films such as this, to make them more interesting. However does that make the film seem much better than it really is? Which leads nicely to the disappointing levels. The ladies of the house may not agree, but Zac Efron doesn't quite cut it as the lead actor here. He was a little hammy to start off with, getting better as the film went on, but perhaps another actor may have been better. That's harsh, but Efron may have been cast more for his looks than the gravitas he could have bought to this role. Although we liked the story, sometimes the plot wore thin and thus you could lose interest. Stick with it and it is heart-warming, it is moving and ultimately rewarding, but it could have been a lot more.

Not an easy or long review, which often indicates the level of quality of the film. We at TNiFN Towers did enjoy it, but perhaps we could have enjoyed it more.

TNiFN Rating 71%

IMDB Link