Destination: HORROR -- Define "Lucky"

When it comes to the young actors of today, my feelings on Zac Efron generally reside somewhere between "Ambivalent" and "Mildly Irritated," which is also how I feel about Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, and all those other guys who are intensely interested in their own abdominal muscles. (To be fair, I don't think Robert Pattinson is actually all that interested in his abdominal muscles... or in shampoo, or personal hygiene in general.) The idea of Zac Efron is more annoying to me than he is, kind of the way the idea of Kim Kardashian is more annoying to me than she is, but the thing that puts Efron closer to my "Mildly Irritated" marker than those other guys is because I have such a hard time taking him seriously, or even of accepting him in anything other than Disney-related projects. And the reason I can't take him seriously is because I think he's a big old fake.

I believe that Efron wants to be a good actor. I believe he really, really wants to be a good actor, and to be taken seriously as an actor, and it's partially that desperation to be seen as legitimate that makes seeing him in the trailer for any kind of movie such an uncomfortable experience. He is appealing in a sparkly teen idol sort of way; he is not appealing in a rebellious, moody, James Dean sort of way, but damn, he wants to be, and he seems to think the best way to achieve that sort of persona is to pose and strut and seem angst-ridden whenever the camera turns his way. But he's not James Dean. He's not even close, which is why when you watch the trailer for a movie like Charlie St. Cloud and one of the female characters actually says, "He's like James Dean or something," it's sort of like saying a green crayon is like a stalk of celery... or something.

Efron's main problem, as far as a I can tell, is that he's far too interested in how he looks, and his entire acting style -- perhaps even his entire acting strategy -- revolves around emphasizing his appearance. You can tell when a person's confidence derives from the symmetry of their face, from the way their hair rests or their arms flex; it's not self-consciousness, necessarily, but a tenuous self-confidence, tinged with a hyper-awareness of one's own exterior. Efron is not the kind of actor who's going to let his body "go" in between films, or the type to let his appearance evolve naturally as he gets older; he's the kind of actor who's going to put a lot of effort into every inch of how he looks, which is why I have a hard time buying him as a rugged soldier type in the upcoming The Lucky One.

Granted, The Lucky One is a Nicholas Sparks movie, so there are a whole host of reasons I won't be seeing it that have nothing to do with Zac Efron. I haven't even seen The Notebook, which is the gold standard of Sparks movies and features two actors I actually like. Efron is the reason, however, that I can't watch anything having to do with The Lucky One without becoming extremely embarrassed and sinking so far down in my seat that I'm at risk of becoming trapped in the sofa. The male character in The Lucky One is obviously supposed to be a very specific type of guy, and Zac Efron is not that type of guy, at all, but he's got himself all dressed up like he is, with the flannel and the beard and throwing-around of the hay bales; whoever persuaded him not to slap a Southern accent on top of all of it is eternally in my good graces, because one hint of twang in his voice and I may have been forced to become an expatriate right there on the spot.

The actress in The Lucky One, Taylor Schilling, also seems much older than Efron, but I looked up their ages, and she's only three months older than I am, and I'm only three years older than Efron. I think the reason for the weird sense of age difference in the movie is because she actually seems appropriate for her role, which may or may not be a good thing for her career, because I have a feeling she's setting herself up to be known as that girl who stuck her hand down the back of Zac Efron's underwear. The producers should have gone with somebody like Scott Porter to play the male lead, or even Porter's Friday Night Lights cast mate Taylor Kitsch, and saved Efron for the Sparks adaptation where he plays a wealthy male model who has to learn to pose again after a terrible accident involving a jeep, a skateboard, and his male model friends, because at least we know he can do that with aplomb -- although not necessarily any more believability.

Destination: HORROR