Movie Review: Geostorm’s Narrative Hodgepodge Is Hard to Miss

For a film that’s marketed solely on the idea of doom, Devlin spends substantial time in an espionage whodunnit.

In disaster movies, nature has been playing truant for years. But in Geostorm, it gets beaten into submission. We’re presented with a fantasy of a satellite system named Dutch Boy that can neutralize extreme weather. If that’s not ill-conceived enough, Gerard Butler shows up as Jake Lawson, the angry middle-aged satellite designer, yes, a scientist, engineer, astronaut and what not rolled into one, a fantasy very few would be capable of.

This is also a story of brotherhood, between Jake and his younger brother Max (Jim Sturgess) who is a key player in the White House. Both brothers have an unremitting feud, and when Max replaces Jake as the head of Dutch Boy, our scientist turns into a jobless car mechanic. But when you have to save the world, you have to. The film kicks into action when the neutralizing system starts with a little malfunction and key people start getting obliterated. Needless to say, the-biggest-disaster-you-can’t-possibly imagine looms large on our planet. So Jake is our man who can save the day, and the world.

When a disaster film comes up with a title like Geostorm, the only reason one would possibly buy a ticket is to watch untethered catastrophes. But the directorial debut of Dean Devlin (the writer of Independence Day) has only minor teases about calamities.

For a film that’s marketed solely on the idea of demonstration of doom, Devlin spends substantial time in an espionage whodunnit. As far as the who’s-that-guy goes, the intrigue works only for the characters inside the film. And for the calamitous events, the sights are few and far between. And whenever they appear, the CGI is so substandard, it gives the whiff of the direct-to-video products of the Asylum. It’s so ludicrous that you’ll find a heatwave in Moscow, tsunami in Dubai, ice storm in Rio de Janeiro, and yes, India is not spared either.

You get a slice of a Mumbai slum, only a street about to be wiped out by a tornado, and a street urchin trying to save his favourite dog. These tiny preposterous bits are of the potent ‘so bad, it’s good’ variety.

Butler grunts his way into the role, and a high dose of ‘suspension of disbelief’ is required to see him enacting those jargons of science.

You half-expect to launch into his ‘This is Sparta’ mode. Sturgess is the only one who brings some emotional cogency into this sea of cardboards.

Geostorm infamously went through many reshoots after poor test screenings, and the narrative hodgepodge is tartly evident. Devlin who worked with Roland Emmerich for years needs to go back to his collaborator to relearn how to blow things up. Till then, the world can save itself.

(The writer is a journalist, a screenwriter, and a content developer who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. He tweets @RanjibMazumder)

(Breathe In, Breathe Out: Are you finding it tough to breathe polluted air? Join hands with FIT to find #PollutionKaSolution. Send in your suggestions to [e-mail] or WhatsApp @ [phone])