Sorry "Charlie"

Charlie St. Cloud (Zac Efron), a sailing prodigy on his way to Stanford on a sailing scholarship, likes to sail. Charlie's little brother Sam (Charlie Tahan), a Red Sox fan who wants to play in the big leagues some day, likes to play baseball. The boys are close. In terms of character depth, that's what you get in this novel adaptation directed by Burr Steers. When both boys die in a car accident and only Charlie is revived, well, things get a little strange. Grieving, Charlie abandons his college plans in favor of becoming the caretaker at the cemetary where Sam is buried.

But don't let Sam's lifelessness fool you: Charlie sees dead people. In a "Sixth Sense" meets "Field of Dreams" mashup, the boys manage to spend an hour together every night at sunset, playing catch. Fast-forward five years and this is all still happening. (Which is amazing, really. Playing catch with a ghost seems like it would be more of a game of fetch...) Charlie seems to spend most of his time chasing geese off of people's graves and brooding over both the loss of his brother and his self-imposed exile from yacht racing. The audience does not have to guess: Charlie is a hopeless case. And when a love interest (Amanda Crew) comes onto the scene in the form of the pro (yep, you guessed it) yacht racer, Tess, things get even stranger. Incidentally, so does the dialog. When asked about Charlie, Tess states: "He flummoxed me." Um, yeah.

Zac Efron is every bit as dreamy as a tween girl will expect him to be. Those looking for more than just a pretty face will probably find him dreamy, as well. Dreamy in that he seems to spend the movie half asleep in some sort of daze. Our eponymous hero's charisma is inversely proportionate to the vitality of the person he's talking to: around his dead brother, he's somewhat engaging - if serious. Around the living, he's wooden and boring. Mr. Steers seems to think sulkiness implies depth. It does not.

Kim Basinger, playing Charlie's hard-working mother, is criminally underused. Even at her son's funeral, where it would makes sense for her to play some sort of role, you barely get a glimpse of her. Ray Liotta, as the paramedic who brought Charlie back to life, is given marginally more to work with - there's at least a character there. Unfortunately, one of the only characters.

It's a good looking film, but offers little else. A diversion? Honestly, it's too maudlin to even offer that. Does Charlie figure himself out in the end? Inevitably. Is it interesting to watch that happen? Not really. It takes more than a pretty face to tell a story and with Charlie St. Cloud, that's all you're going to get.