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6/09/2016

Charlie St. Cloud (2010) - Steers and Efron's second collaboration is lukewarm



Zac Efron looks hopefully upwards in the arms of Amanda Crew (The Age of Adaline (2015)) on the poster for Burr Steers' Charlie St. Cloud

Charlie's beloved little brother dies in a car accident, which prompts Charlie to postpone his otherwise promising future in lieu of an empty, cautious existence of denial.

Charlie St. Cloud is a polished, breezy, handsomely shot (by Enrique Chediak (RED 2 (2013))) and color-controlled teen romance melodrama. Zac Efron (Dirty Grandpa (2016)) plays well, and Ray Liotta (John Q (2002)) and Kim Basinger (Bless the Child (2000)) are fine in supporting roles, but the plot is too farfetched to score: SPOILER For 5 (!) years, Charlie throws ball with his dead brother in the forest (!), - but this still doesn't mean that he's gone even just a little cuckoo!?! SPOILER The boat talks in the romance, (Charlie falls for a girl who is a great sailor like himself), and the participation of several other otherworldly hunky young male stars (Dave Franco (The Lego Movie (2014)), Matt Ward (TRON: Legacy (2010)) and Augustus Prew (Kick-Ass 2 (2013))) also make the film too thick to really be taken seriously.
Charlie St. Cloud is written by Craig Pearce (The Great Gatsby (2013)) and Lewis Colick (Domestic Disturbance (2001)), based on the novel The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud (2004) by Ben Sherwood (The Man Who Ate the 747 (2000)), and directed by great American filmmaker Burr Steers (Igby Goes Down (2002)). It's a fairly entertaining film with some good values, but with a scenario that's too unlikely to really succeed.

Related review:

17 Again (2009) or, Teentainment Deluxe


Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 44 mil. $
Box office: 48.1 mil. $
= Big flop
[Charlie St. Cloud was released July 30 and runs 99 minutes. 3 Hollywood studios were in a bidding war for Sherwood's book before it was even published. The rights were finally secured by Universal, reportedly for over 1 mil. $. Efron turned down the Footloose remake to star in this thought to be hot ticket. Filming took place from July - October 2009 in British Columbia and New York. The film opened #5 (behind Inception, Dinner for Schmucks, Salt and Despicable Me) to a 12.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it grossed 31.1 mil. $ (64.7 % of the total gross). The film's 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Germany and Australia with 2.1 mil. $ (4.4 %) each. Even though the over-budgeted film received generally poor reviews, its relatively small performance is something of a reality check for Efron's star power, who soon thereafter chose to abandon his clean teen idol persona. Charlie St. Cloud is rotten at 27 % with a 4.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Charlie St. Cloud?

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