While watching Geostorm, I had this feeling that it was playing like a half-assed Roland Emmerich movie. Once the end credits rolled, my suspicions were confirmed. Turns out, it was written and directed by Emmerich’s longtime producing partner, Dean Devlin. He must’ve been the wrong half of the ass. Devlin combines all the usual disaster movie cliches with a lot of Armageddon-inspired space shit. (Right down to the final teary-eyed goodbye.) Some of this works in small doses, but the clunky plot mechanics often get in the way of the fun.
The world is plagued by outbursts of extreme weather. Scientist Gerard Butler saves the planet when he invents a weather satellite to maintain and correct the erratic climate shifts. When the thing malfunctions and people wind up frozen to death in the desert, it’s up to Butler to go into outer space to fix it.
Gerard Butler vs. the Weather. Sounds like a can’t-miss proposition. Honestly, there are moments when you can kind of see what they were going for, and it almost-but-not-quite works. However, the government cover-up/political intrigue/international sabotage subplots really bring the movie to a halt in the second act. Once the weather hits the fan, it’s not quite enough to win you back from all the dull plot stuff. I mean, who needs human villains when you have a global storm?
A few of the disaster scenes are OK. My favorite bit was when buildings toppled into one another and crumbled like a skyscraper version of dominoes. Devlin also delivers a nifty escape scene when Secret Service agent Abbie Cornish evacuates President Andy Garcia from an out-of-control lightning storm in Orlando. However, many of the weather-related set pieces (cyclones in India, a hailstorm in Japan, frozen waves in Brazil) feel rushed and are ultimately unsatisfying.
Butler is fun. Casting him as a brilliant scientist suggests that no one was really taking any of this seriously. However, even he can’t save the picture when it gets bogged down. The supporting cast (which includes Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, and Zazie Beets) do what they can to stand out from the uninspired scenes of weather destruction. Unfortunately, just about everyone involved winds up getting left out in the rain.
i'd give this film at least 2 and a half stars, I think it's fine for what it is. Honestly I liked the stuff with the human villains more then the generic disaster stuff that I've seen done in countless other disaster movies, hell that was the main reason why I checked it out.
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