BrendanW 
Since unpredictable weather has become such a combative force to deal with, genius engineer Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) devises a satellite-powered device that can eliminate certain weather patterns and allow for more control of them overall. However, years after the unpredictable Jake is kicked off the project and his younger brother Max (Jim Sturgess) takes over the project, something goes wrong with the Dutchboy (the name of the device) and Jake is called in to investigate before a large series of storms threatens to end humanity.
PROS:
There are a few decent special effects chases but they are few and far between and don’t really add much to the proceedings.
CONS:
The biggest problem with the overall movie is that it is really boring. For a film that promises big, dumb special effects and fun action sequences, the ones we do get are quite dull and nothing special. Combine that with the characters that no one really cares about and it’s hard to get the blood pumping for any of the big scenes.
Will people please just let Gerard Butler use his real accent? I don’t know why he is always cast as these All-American heros when he can barely pull off the accent at all. It would not have changed a single thing to have him play a Scottish dude that lives in America and designed a weather machine.
Even for a stupid disaster movie, this movie was particularly far-fetched. A satellite-based device that controls and/or even destroys weather is stupid to begin with but the fact that this film establishes that fact before the story even begins is absurd. That is our baseline that we begin the movie with whereas you might expect the film to start with the absurd amounts of bad weather that eventually lead up to the conclusion of Gerard Butler the genius scientist building the weather machine. That would be stupid too but at least it would be a somewhat-more relatable problem to start off the world rather than a world that exists that already has a mysterious weather machine.
The rest of the actors clearly didn’t give one damn about the material but how can you blame them? Ed Harris is a terrific performer but in this movie he might as well have been on auto-pilot the entire time. Jim Sturgess seemed to put forth some effort but no one really cared about the barely-developed relationship between him and his brother played by Gerard Butler.
It takes too long to get to the actual storms. We are watching a movie called Geostorm to see crazy action scenes involving big, dumb special effects and people running away from them. While we do get quite a bit of that to a certain degree, it takes forever and a day to slog through all the plot setup with stuff we don’t care about: the romance between Sturgess and his Secret Service girlfriend, the sibling relationship, the whole thing involving the president… everything, really. Oh, and the Geostorm in question? Yeah, SPOILER ALERT – we never really get that.
All of the political corruption stuff was really unnecessary and lame. I don’t understand why it’s in this big, dumb disaster movie and it’s also incredibly predictable on top of all that. The villain is a surprising reveal just because it was the most obvious choice possible.
The script is ABOMINABLE. There are so many eye-rolling lines that I got a headache. “Marry her!” was one of the worst offenders. You’ll cringe when you hear talented actor Andy Garcia utter those words. Ugh.
OVERALL:
Even for disaster movie standards, this was awful, boring and the script was reprehensibly bad. Avoid at all costs unless you must see every terrible movie that stars Gerard Butler.
RATING: ½*
Rating System:
Less than * (Actively offensive to one’s intelligence)
* (Brutal; bottom-of-the-barrel)
** (Some elements keep it from being awful but still not very good)
*** (Completely watchable; a rental as old-timers might say)
**** (Great film with a few things here and there keeping it from being perfect)
***** (Flawless; a true achievement)
