JL movie buff Katelyn Barbee is back with another review!
Katelyn Barbee is a Phoenix college student by day and a writer by night. When not working on her fantasy series, you can find her at the cinema catching the latest flicks or enjoying a nature walk when the weather is nice. Her publications include “The Miller’s Daughter” in From the Stories of Old and “The Solstice Beast” in Whispers in the Shadows.
Geostorm
Predictable and done better elsewhere, Geostorm is fun, mindless action if you shut your brain off while you watch it.
Tell me if you’ve seen this before: a natural disaster threatens to annihilate the planet, and only a small team of individuals (usually scientists) can stop it by doing something crazy. Sound familiar? I’ve basically just described the plot of such movies as Armageddon, The Core, and The Day After Tomorrow. Exchange natural disaster for aliens and you could even count Independence Day.
In Geostorm’s case, it’s a small team of international scientists (led by Gerard Butler) who have to fix their broken space station before it can create extreme weather events that will destroy Earth. Considering what the trailers show, there’s surprisingly little destruction. In fact, that’s about it, due to most of the plot taking place on either an international space station or centered on protecting the United States president.
It’s not really a terrible movie. The acting, direction, and action scenes are fine. It’s just that we’ve seen this done a million times before, and better, in films like Independence Day. You know this plot: if the heroes don’t stop the doomsday event, (with a handy countdown clock!), then the world will be destroyed and billions of people will die.
At times, the movie feels like it’s trying to be two separate movies that just aren’t meshing well. On one side, we have a whodunit, centering around the mystery of who’s tampered with the space station, and caused it to malfunction. On the other, it wants to be a straight disaster movie with explosions and people running from whatever catastrophe is befalling them.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s enjoyable in that mindless, action movie way. Not entirely a surprise, given its director has done films such as Independence Day and 2012. And at the end of the day, you can enjoy it, sure, but you’ll probably forget about it not long after.
Rating: 4/10
Elise Edmonds lives in a quiet South Gloucestershire village, where she spends her free time with her husband and two cats, and enjoys attending local fitness classes, watching movies, and playing the piano. Pursuing writing in her spare time as a creative outlet is a way to bring the magic back into her everyday life.
