'Charlie St. Cloud': Zac Efron shows he's more than just a dreamboat

There's an unfussy confidence to Zac Efron's acting, a physical ease on camera that doesn't require mannerisms or tricks. He is slipping the bounds of high-school musicals and dramas right before our eyes, and his screen presence is already more adult-masculine than Leonardo DiCaprio's was at this age.

And if directors choose to shoot him in close-up, well, he can't help it if he's pretty.

"Charlie St. Cloud" ably packages Efron in a teen weeper, a transitional romance that takes the "High School Musical" star into his 20s, with adult concerns and emotional issues. But it's also a gimmicky glop of sentimentality, "Ghost" meets "The Sixth Sense."

We meet Charlie at his peak — king of the small-boat sailors in his Pacific Northwest hometown, headed to Stanford on a sailing scholarship.

Yeah, Mom (Kim Basinger, underused) has to work two jobs to keep them going, but Charlie and his somewhat-spoiled younger brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan), are lucky kids with bright futures.

Then, graduation night ... an accident. Sam is gone. Charlie almost died, too, but a devout Catholic paramedic (Ray Liotta) willed him back to life.

The only problem? Charlie still sees Sam. And he's promised the now-dead brother he'd meet him "at evening cannons" (guns fired at the yacht club at sunset) to play catch and talk Red Sox baseball.

Cut to five years later; everybody else has moved on. But Charlie couldn't go to college. He works and lives at the cemetery, hangs with a wacky gravedigger (Augustus Prew) and can only gaze in envy as his former sailing rival (Amanda Crew) preps for a solo sailboat race around the world.

Tess is interested, but she's about to hit the high seas. Charlie is interested, but he can't leave town.

Efron, reteaming with his "17 Again" director Burr Steers, plays a nice range of cocky to emotionally crippled. Crew ("The Haunting in Connecticut") makes a beguiling enough presence and a moderately credible sailor. The way the two brothers' relationship stays frozen in time feels right.

But the movie's central gimmick isn't enough, and when more supernatural twists kick in, it lost me.