Jennifer Love Hewitt, you've got some competition. The trailer for Zac Efron's new film Charlie St. Cloud has made its way online, and it casts the former Taylor Lautner as a smart, rich, loving, yachting, Stanford-bound mensch who loves to wear sleeveless shirts. Can it get even better for our hero? It can: an accident leaves him able to talk to ghosts. Well, one in particular.
That'd be the ghost of his younger brother, who perished in the same accident that apparently gave Efron the mystical ability. There's always a downside! Luckily for Efron, at least he can distract himself by wooing a pretty girl who also loves yachting, though Ghost Bro is threatened by the new addition; who will he play Ghost Catch with now?
Supernatural though it may be, I couldn't help but think of this past spring's Remember Me as I watched this trailer. Each film casts a squee-inducing hunk opposite some veteran actors (in this case, Ray Liotta and Kim Basinger), then gives him a muted romance and a tragic backdrop to play it out against. Remember Me, however, was a bit of an underperformer. Universal has higher hopes for the summer-scheduled St. Cloud, but coming off of Me and Orson Welles, is Efron still the teen draw he used to be?
VERDICT: A ghost of a chance.