Charlie St. Cloud

Zac Efron has potential; he was good in 17 Again, great in Me and Orson Welles and pretty damn funny when he hosted Saturday Night Live. But his participation in this sentimental dreck takes him down a few notches on the cool scale. He portrays the title character, an avid sailor with a big career ahead of him. While out driving with his little bro, Sam (Charlie Tahan), his car gets hit, and Sam is killed. Before he died, Charlie made some oath to throw a baseball around with him every night, and he does this with Sam’s ghost, who is “in between,” like the dudes on Lost. Charlie gets a girlfriend (Amanda Crew) who also likes sailing, and something utterly predictable and stupid happens. The film is a cloying hodgepodge full of inconsistencies, impossibilities and emotional goop. Efron is fine, but the material is trash. Avoid at all costs.