Charlie St. Cloud

First Hit: This was a good film which held together well.

A number of films which deal with the loss of a loved one, life after death, the space between life and death, and the dealing with death don’t do it very well.

Some films, like Sixth Sense, Heaven Can Wait and even Ghost, do it in interesting and thoughtful ways. Charlie St. Cloud can be added to this list.

The story is about a young man who, through his sailing abilities, gets a scholarship to Stanford. His single mother, Claire (played by Kim Basinger), has worked extra shifts at the local hospital to support Charlie (played by Zac Efron) and his very close younger brother Sam (played by Charlie Tahan).

Because Charlie is a good 6 years older and they have no father, Sam looks up to Charlie and Charlie reciprocates by teaching Sam what he knows about sailing, life and baseball. Charlie gets in a car accident and Sam dies in that accident. Charlie cannot forgive himself and forgoes his life at Stanford to keep the memory of his brother alive.

Five years after the accident we see him as the caretaker of the local cemetery. One evening out he wanders down to the dock and starts admiring a wonderful sailboat. He discovers that Tess Carroll (played by Amanda Crew), an acquaintance from high school, owns the boat and is preparing to sail around the world in a solo race.

Through a confluence of events of which I won’t go into detail here, he saves both their lives in different ways. What works about this story is that it is well crafted. It doesn’t waste time with over long setups. It doesn’t telegraph the ending, the script is clean and it stays on target all the way until the ending.

Efron is a good looking young man and he can act. It was great to see Basinger again; it has been a long time. Tahan is wonderful as the hell bent younger brother who is both feisty and thoughtful. Crew is wonderful and fits especially well with Efron. Ray Liotta has a small but key part in the film which was good as well. Craig Pearce and Lewis Colick wrote a good script and Burr Steers directed this film with a clear vision.

Overall: Yes it is a romantic drama between very young people and it works very well.

Sex Drive

First Hit: Some funny bits, but mostly more inane stupid bits than funny ones.

By watching a couple of previews, I knew this would be a B level film, and it was.

The premise is that Josh Zuckerman (playing Ian) is a young 16 year old boy who fantasies about having sex. He believes that most everyone else he knows has “done it” and he is an outcast. He really likes his best friend Felicia (played by Amanda Crew) but she likes one of his friends.

She is afraid that making their friendship more will kill the friendship. Ian uses the internet to attract a young woman in Nashville. Part of the attraction is that Ian falsely portrays himself as a football player and owner of a 1969 “Judge.”

The picture he posts on the internet is his brothers as is the car he says he owns. His brother decides to leave town with the rest of his family so Ian steals the car to meet with this internet beauty. On the way, they meet Amish and other characters.

When he meets his internet date, despite her beauty and willingness to have sex with him he says he can’t because I cares about someone else. However, this internet girl is really just a front for a car theft ring. Anyway, everything works out in the end but getting there is convoluted. I did learn one thing though there is a tradition in the Amish church called Rumspringa when young kids are allowed to experience the outside world.

Almost 80% of them come back to the church after experiencing the outside world for a while.

Overall: This was a dumb film although I loved seeing the car of my dreams back in 1969; “The Judge.”