Megan’s Guest Review – Charlie St. Cloud
Our friend Megan reviews the latest Zac Efron flick:
Charlie St. Cloud (Zac Efron) is spending his last summer in Massachusetts before heading off to Stanford on a full sailing scholarship (really?), and vows to play catch with his little brother, Sam, every day before he leaves. Only, POW – they’re hit by a Mack Truck and Sam DIES. Zac dies too, but Ray Liotta uses his St. Jude medal to bring him back to life because he doesn’t believe in lost causes. Unless they’re Zac’s brother, Sam, in which case he totally believes in lost causes.
FIVE YEARS LATER.
Fade up on five years later and no one has aged at all. Zac has put his education on hold (totally never going to Stanford) in order to take a full time position as grounds-keeper of the local cemetery. SEXY! This job allows him plenty of time to converse with the ghosts that he’s been seeing ever since his accident. Including, of course, Sam, with whom he plays catch every night when the cannon fires (like we’ve reverted to 1867, and we don’t have clocks or watches or cell-phones with alarms).
Enter Tess, who ascended the sailing throne that Zac left behind when he became a Ghost Whisperer, and is planning a solo trip around the world. The best way to practice for such a voyage? Sail headlong into a hurricane by yourself, without telling anyone what you’re doing. The next morning she wakes up on her father’s grave with a nasty gash on her head. Zac takes her back to his place and cleans her up. Then they totally do it in the graveyard! It’s sort of sexy, but also not sexy because it’s entirely in silhouette and shot from the shoulders up. What is this, ABC Family? Show us some man-skin!
Zac wakes up alone in the graveyard, and finds out Tess has been missing for three days, so that wasn’t her he had sex with, it was a ghost! SEXY! Er, I mean, CREEPY! Zac is sad for like a minute, but then comes to the conclusion that she isn’t ACTUALLY dead, she’s just sort of dead. So he steals a boat and goes looking for her, but it takes a really long time, which means Zac isn’t back in time to play catch with Sam. Sam is pretty sad, and obviously doesn’t realize that he’s a GHOST and therefore could just zap himself into Zac’s boat and hang out with him all he wants. Instead, he walks toward the light, and goes to heaven! Yay!
Meanwhile, out on the ocean, Zac sees the shooting star and realizes that it’s Sam’s spirit going up to heaven AND showing him the location of Tess’s wreck. Zac finds Tess in a desperate state of hypothermia, and promptly strips her down to share his body heat with her. And that’s… not that sexy. They lie like that for a really long time.
Next thing you know, everyone is fine, and Tess can’t understand why she keeps having sexy dreams about Zac Efron (join the club). He tells her it’s because they totally had sex while she was dead, and she’s pretty okay with that, so they plan a trip around the world together, and sail off into the sunset in their snowy white sailing outfits. THE END.
In summation: Not enough shirtless Zac Efron. I give it two flares and a St. Jude medal for this lost cause.
