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By Brian Lafferty
July 30, 2010 (San Diego)--Charlie St. Cloud is one of those movies that made me wonder if it should have even been made. The two major themes in this picture are death and letting go. These by no means rank the highest on the controversy meter when it comes to sensitive subjects. Charlie St. Cloud doesn’t handle these themes in a competent manner but that’s only one symptom of an even larger problem: the plot, the characters, and their actions are built on such a shaky foundation that the movie is doomed to begin with.
Everything seems to be going well for high school graduate Charlie St. Cloud (Zac Efron), who is bound for a prestigious college. He has a passion for sailboat racing and intends to sail around the world. He has a great relationship with his little brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan), which the film spares no expense in showing.
This was the first bad sign because it could mean only one thing: one of these brothers will die. A drunk driver smashes into the car Charlie is driving, killing Sam. Later, Charlie sees Sam’s ghost and the two make a pact: every day at sunset the two will play catch.
Five years pass. After a lengthy expository reel that meanders in its attempt to tell us what happened in the last five years, the film zeroes in on the main plot. In it, he meets Tess (Amanda Crew) an aspiring sailing enthusiast. He immediately becomes smitten with her. The relationship, which is at times tender and only very occasionally sweet, is marred by tragedy, in which the filmmakers throw in twists that are effective only in that they are cruel and cheap.
The film’s biggest flaw is at the concept level. All the major plot points rely on tragedy to advance the plot. Ordinarily, this would not be a problem for me but it doesn’t work in Charlie St. Cloud they exist for only two reasons: to shock the audience and to simply throw a curveball for our protagonist.
I am reminded of the 1939 weepie On Borrowed Time. In that movie Lionel Barrymore plays a curmudgeonly grandfather to a young boy (Bobs Watson, a child actor who was always adept at crying for the camera) who lost his parents. He gets a visit from Mr. Brink, who tells him his time is up. The grandfather refuses and, outraged when he learns Mr. Brink took his wife of many years traps him up a tree with the help of his grandson.
The opening shot features the boy’s parents dying in a car crash but it doesn’t lay it on thick. Nor does it spend any time before showing a loving relationship only to have it taken away. Beulah Bondi’s death scene is not manipulative because of the way Death gently and compassionately guides her to the other side. Do they provide plot points? Yes, but they also exist for a greater, didactic purpose: Bondi's character knew her time was up and she accepted it but Barrymore's character doesn’t want to die, even though he eventually learns it’s best that he go along with Mr. Brink.
The deaths and tragedies in Charlie St. Cloud serve no defensible purpose other than to shock the audience and to make the characters’ lives difficult. Rather than give a laundry list, I’ll list the film’s biggest offense, which is the twist in which Charlie realizes the girl he loves, who he has been seeing the past few days, is dead. Or is she? I won’t reveal except to say that it is a terrible thing to do to an audience.
That’s not to say I believe characters should always be alive and never in danger of kicking the bucket. Nor do I demand that tragedy not be used as a plot point. But when a movie relies on it for no other reason than to advance the story as Charlie St. Cloud does, it doesn’t matter how good the acting is, how warm the romance, nor how good the direction is. There was no way this movie could have worked on any level.
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