Review: Geostorm


Apparently 2019 was an environmentally shite year. Wait, what? Did I sleep through the rest of 2018? Oh, no. This is just set slightly in the future. No, apparently in 2019 the Earth gets besieged by extreme weather events causing all kinds of major infrastructural havoc. This causes countries and their representatives to band together in the fight against (cover your ears, science deniers) climate change, via the creation of a hi-techy tech satellite system that is supposed to combat the problem before it gets out of hand. Three years later and the shit hits the fan just as the U.S. are about to hand over the system to an international authority. The U.S. President (Andy Garcia) and his Secretary of State (Ed Harris) decide to bring in the former head of the satellite project, engineer Gerard Butler to go up to the International Space Station and fix the problem. Jim Sturgess plays Butler’s pencil-pushing State Department brother, who was the guy who fired Butler in the first place. Abbie Cornish is Sturgess’ Secret Service agent girlfriend, whilst Alexandra Maria Lara plays the current Space Station leader.



If you’re not going to make a good disaster movie, at least make it laughably bad. There’s few things worse than a boring, humourless and average disaster movie. This 2017 disaster movie from debut feature director Dean Devlin and his co-writer Paul Guyot (an occasional writer for TV) is uncomfortably in between a dreadful disaster movie and an average one, but much closer to the former than the latter. However, since it’s entirely humourless and dull, it’s unable to be enjoyed on even an ironic level. It stinks, hell it’s even worse than the ridiculous and bloated “Armageddon”. In fact, the only thing it has over that Jerry Bruckheimer film is that it’s a lot shorter.



Gerard Butler is OK if you like what he brings to a film, Alexandra Maria Lara has been much better elsewhere, and the rest are either mediocre or poorly used (Or both, in the case of Abbie Cornish, a sometimes pretty effective actress who seemingly has no idea how to choose the right role for herself). Kudos for having the least surprising ‘surprise’ bad guy of 2017, you won’t be fooled for even a second. Even for this kind of thing, it’s bloody absurd, but Devlin (who wrote the occasionally amusing “Stargate” and “Independence Day” for Roland Emmerich) refuses to have any fun with its absurdity. Sure, there are moments; One scene set in the UAE might as well have been underscored by the music from “Lawrence of Arabia”. Another between Butler and Jim Sturgess is a ridiculous rip-off of an emotional moment in “Armageddon”. Worse still, they cop out on it.



Distressingly dull and humourless, and the purported reshoots and behind-the-scenes issues are as plain as day on screen. This is a boring mess. What can I do with boring? Nothing much at all.



Rating: C-

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