This week's most ridiculous trailer: Charlie St. Cloud

Oh, Zac Efron. With your rippling arm muscles and your perpetual look of vaguely baffled concentration, you might, like Keanu Reeves, go on to more serious films that use your vacant expression for something interesting--but you'll always be a teen heartthrob to us. And stupid, formulaic studio vehicles like Charlie...

By Jef Otte

July 30, 2010

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Oh, Zac Efron. With your rippling arm muscles and your perpetual look of vaguely baffled concentration, you might, like Keanu Reeves, go on to more serious films that use your vacant expression for something interesting--but you'll always be a teen heartthrob to us. And stupid, formulaic studio vehicles like Charlie St. Cloud will always be what you were meant to star in.

To be fair, it's not exactly the trailer of Charlie St Cloud that's ridiculous, per se; rather, it's the movie itself, based on how the trailer represents it. Let's take a look:

After seeing that, we can pretty much save our ten bucks on the movie--we've basically already seen it. Managing to cram about four musical montages into its 2:30 run time, the trailer offers a condensed version of the artificial highs and lows we might expect in 800 percent as much time at the actual movie. The plot arcs, we laugh, we cry, we get up for a second and use the bathroom and ask what we missed when we get back, and then it's over and, feeling satisfied, we YouTube something else.

But wait! The trailer does leave one question unanswered: Will Zac go with his brother or the girl? I guess we'll have to see the movie to find... on second thought, unless it's the most existentialist teen heartthrob flick ever, it's the girl.

So, check. No need to see it.

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