Geostorm – A Storm of Terrible

Another disaster film in every sense of the word.

Synopsis: After an unprecedented series of natural disasters threatened the planet, the world’s leaders came together to create an intricate network of satellites to control the global climate and keep everyone safe. But now, something has gone wrong–the system built to protect the Earth is attacking it, and it’s a race against the clock to uncover the real threat before a worldwide geostorm wipes out everything…and everyone along with it. (Warner Bros.)

Starring: Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, and Abbie Cornish

Writers: Dean Devlin and Paul Guyot

Director: Dean Devlin

Rating: PG (Canada)/PG-13 (United States)

Running Time: 109mins

Trailer: 

For showtimes and more, check out Geostorm on movietimes.com.

The term “popcorn flick” has been thrown around as an excuse for big, stupid blockbusters, at least the majority of the time. Sometimes these types of films can be okay on occasion but this was not the case this time around. This will be fine for many people (that’s house these types of films keep being made) but there’s only so much the rest of us can take. The story is incohesive, silly, full of plot holes, and contrived to the point of laziness by the writers.

Those who’ve seen most of the trailers have pretty much seen the film but for those who haven’t, in 2019 (we got 2 years to go), the world’s superpowers have all come together to build a network of satellites within the International Space Station called “Dutch Boy” in order to combat the world’s ever-changing climate. Of course the satellite goes awry, causing a series of storms around the world. The hope was to stop them before they combined to create what was known as a geostorm. The only hope for the survival of humanity was the engineer who built Dutch Boy, Jake Lawson (Butler), his brother Max (Sturgess), and Max’s Secret Service agent girlfriend Sarah (Cornish).

The film’s tone was all over the place as it felt like it wasn’t sure what it wanted to be. It threw several genres at us without succeeding at any of them. There’s the obvious ones with action and sci-fi but there’s also some family drama and thriller elements. Ultimately none of these really mattered as they lacked any impact whatsoever. It seemed like the writers believed that these would all fit together somehow, however, they didn’t for many reasons with the atrocious script being the biggest.

The script simply brought everything down. The cheesy dialogue and no character development along with the stupid story make it next to impossible to get into it. The acting was horrendous as well but that was probably more the script and the direction than anything else. The characters aren’t worth caring about either. Butler lacks any charisma and phones in his performance. Sturgess looks uncomfortable and wooden. Cornish isn’t a believable Secret Service agent. Andy Garcia and Ed Harris phone it in as well. Even the special effects couldn’t make it watchable. There wasn’t anything new in that regard and the terrible CGI didn’t help its cause either.

Overall, this was a terrible disaster film with an atrocious script, horrendous acting, and terrible special effects. Some may be entertained by this “popcorn flick” but we as viewers should not settle as we deserve better.

Score: 3/10

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.