Sam is not the only dead person Charlie can see.  He encounters other dead people too.  He talks to them, jokes with them, he can even have sex with them if he wants (yes, that IS kind of gross).  Charlie and Sam’s daily get together is threatened when Tess (Amanda Crew) an old high school classmate and sailing rival of Charlie comes back to town to prepare for a race.  She and Charlie start to get involved, much to the dismay of Sam.  When Tess goes missing preparing for the race, Charlie believes he is the only one who can save her.

Any character that loses a kid brother will obviously go through a lot of emotions throughout the course of the movie.  Zac Efron, tries as he might, can’t pull off any of them.  From the very first frame of this movie, you don’t believe he is this character.  This is a very important trait for any actor to have.  When we see Tom Hanks in “Forest Gump” we don’t see Tom Hanks on the screen, we see the character he is playing and believes it.  When we see Heath Ledger play The Joker in “The Dark Knight” we don’t see Heath Ledger we see The Joker.  We know we are watching Tom Hanks and Heath Ledger on the screen, but we don’t think about them as Tome hanks or Heath Ledger we only see the character they are playing.  It’s unfair to compare Zac Efron to these Oscar winning performers, but this is what acting is all about.  We do believe the characters Taham and Crew are portraying which makes Efron’s problems more evident on the screen.  When you see Zac Efron in this movie you can’t help to think to yourself that you are watching Zac Efron, the actor, acting on screen, and NOT the character he is suppose to inhabit.  He never seems natural, and his performance can be described as stilted.  He doesn’t even seem real when he is pissed off.

This movie is supposed to be a tearjerker; but, the movie will probably produce very few wet eyes in the house.  Director Burr Steers has to take some of the blame for that.  He tries the typical devices in this movie to get you to tear up.  The score is often a downer. There is a scene of Charlie running through the forest as he relives the accident in quick flashbacks.  Relying on stunts like this is cheap and it takes more than that to generate a tear.  Steers and Efron do create SOME true moments in the movie; but, not many.  These scenes come at the end of the movie, after the final conflict of the film.  Perhaps these were shot last, and Efron was finally able to relax.  If so, there is still hope for the young actor.  Until then, “Charlie St. Cloud” can only be a tiny steppingstone in the young man’s career.  It’s not one any of us needs to sit through.