This is part of a series of No Shame Movie Reviews. For reasons I won’t speculate and rant about now, we have been told that only some movies are worth enjoying. Only artsy movies with a meaningful and/or ambiguous message, perhaps. To that, I say phooey. I say that you should be able to watch and enjoy any movie you want – from low-budget children’s movies to dramas about the hopelessly romantic. If you enjoy them, then why the heck should you not be able to watch them without shame?
I can’t list all of the movies I’ve reviewed off the top of my head, but in general they have tended towards the light-hearted, kids, or gushy. This week I’m going to change it up, just a little bit, and talk about a movie that will make you bawl — Charlie St. Cloud.
Charlie St. Cloud tells the story of Charlie (Zac Efron), who barely survives a car crash that kills his younger brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan). Given his near-death experience, Charlie is able to remain in contact with Sam, playing baseball with him every night at sunset. But then comes Tess (Amanda Crew), an old friend of Charlie’s about to fulfill his dream of sailing around the world. Over the course of the movie, Charlie must come to terms with what it means to have survived the accident, and whether it’s okay to live a life without Sam.
Sounds like a real tear-jerker, right?
Now, I admit that I am someone who cried a lot during movies. Like, a LOT. But this one isn’t just me being a super emotional person. It is genuinely heart-wrenching.
(Just a moment’s tangent to talk about crying and movies. I, clearly, am all for it. If a movie is able to make me cry, then clearly it’s doing something right. It has characters complex enough for me to empathize with, and a plot well-developed enough for me to care about.
My mom always says that a movie’s probably not good if she doesn’t cry even once. While there are obvious exceptions to this rule, it’s a pretty good one to follow. If a movie is trying to be touching or sad and it still doesn’t make me cry, then clearly all the pieces didn’t quite come together as planned. Tears are a sign that a movie made me care, made me feel something. And that’s a mark of a good movie if I’ve ever seen one.)
But back to Charlie St. Cloud. One thing the film does so well is get across a message without being annoyingly heavy-handed with it. Done incorrectly, a strong message can easily turn me off of a movie. I watch films to be entertained, not to be preached at. Charlie St. Cloud hits that balance perfectly. It makes its points — about family, mourning, falling in love, letting go, second chances, etc. — but it doesn’t hit you over the head with them. The story is entwined with the meaning and the message is imparted seamlessly.
Now, this isn’t all to say that Charlie St. Cloud is just a complete downer that makes you sob and think about the meaning of life the entire time. At the heart of it, this is a movie about two brothers who love each other, and that relationship really comes out on screen. Charlie and Sam play in the rain, going down an impromptu slip-n-slide on trash can lids. They scare off pesky geese with a toy plane. They’re boys having fun.
On a much less symbolic, meaning-infused note (though I am sure my cinematography professor would disagree were she to hear me say that), Charlie St. Cloud is an absolutely beautiful movie. It opens with a stunning sailboat race and — logically, given the nature of Charlie’s relationship with Sam — contains dozens of breathtaking sunsets. In a movie about learning to reconnect with the world after a tragedy, Charlie certainly has a gorgeous world to reenter.
If you have any ideas for a movie that you want me to review, then let me know! Bad, fun, silly, adorable, enjoyable, romantic, anything that you shouldn’t be ashamed to watch and love! (Bonus cookies if it’s also on Netflix.)
Image credit: imdb.com; blu-ray.com; charliederry.com; blogs.babycenter.com