There was a time, back in about 2012, when I genuinely believed that Gerard Butler was going to be a great actor. I admit, this was mostly to do with the film Coriolanus where he blew everyone’s minds by being fucking awesome in Shakespeare. Since then, Hollywood has continued to cast him in underwhelming action movies or shitty romantic-comedies. How many of you out there can name a Gerard Butler movie that they enjoyed? Okay, I’m sure a few of you will have said 300 but then we have to get into the whole Zack Snyder debate. I mean the guy fucking sucks! Look at what he’s doing to DC. I mean I’ll give him Watchmen because I was one of the few people who liked it. Anyway, I can’t get into this again. So, ignoring 300 (because we’ll never agree) name a Gerard Butler film that you actually like? It fucking tricky, right? Can you even name 5 Gerard Butler movies? They all pretty much meld into one so it’s really difficult to tell them apart. Kind of like Vin Diesel, if you’ve seen one Gerard Butler film then you’ve seen them all. Or at least that’s what I thought before Geostorm came out. I genuinely believe that this film marks the very moment that Gerard Butler became the new Nicolas Cage. It was a film that looked so preposterous that I never planned on seeing it. The kind of film based around such dodgy scientific fact that you walk out of it feeling like fucking Stephen Hawking compared to the writers. Still, I wasn’t counting on being full of cold this week. I wanted to watch and review the new Netflix film Mudbound because it looks bloody amazing. My brain wasn’t quite prepared for that though. So yesterday, overcome by the various fluids that are slowly filling the hole where my face normally resides, I decided it was a good idea to actually watch the film that made Gerard Butler one of the most unconvincing American scientists ever seen on-screen. I mean, it is only about 109 minutes long. Even in as close to a snotty death as I was, that was a length I could manage.

So what is Geostorm? You mean, other than one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in my life? Well, it is set in the not too distant future of 2019 where global warming got so bad that science had to come up with an answer to stop freak weather from destroying everything. The plan? To create a “net” around the Earth made up of satellites and shit that somehow, I was never too sure, stop extreme weather from affecting life on the surface. I assume it blows clouds up or some shit but I’m no scientist… although I guess that didn’t stop the writers of this film. After years of trying, the people of Earth finally have control of the weather. So this “net”, known as Dutch boy after the story of a boy plugging a dam with his finger, has made life on Earth pretty sweet. Until things start to go wrong. Suddenly unexpected weather conditions crop up and it becomes apparent that someone is messing with Dutch boy’s controls. If the satellites can’t be brought back into line the world is set to experience a cataclysmic event: the titular ‘geostorm’. Can Dutch boy’s designer, Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) and his brother Max (Jim Sturgess) find out who is trying to destroy the world?

Geostorm has received a lot of publicity prior to being released but none of it could be described as positive. The making of the film was delayed, derailed and fraught with disasters. After going through several makeovers, the final product was openly mocked online as audiences compared it to the kind of straight to VHS guff that you find in your local bargain bin. It’s the kind of shitty disaster movie that you tend to find flicking through the channels at midnight instead of a major Hollywood blockbuster. There’s no getting away from the fact that the film has looked as though it was going to be shit from the beginning. However, there was always a chance it would be so bad that it actually became enjoyable again. So, is Geostorm one of those so bad it’s funny films?

Erm… no. I admit that I laughed a several points through the film but there was never a stage when I was laughing with it. Always at it. At it’s terrible CGI, the awful script, the crap acting, the badly written characters, the miscasting and the completely misjudged attempt to turn it into some sort of modern fable about climate change. I can’t think of one redeeming feature that this film had. It’s such a badly made film that, in order to show the disaster is on a global scale, shows fleeting stereotypical images of foreign people running from extreme weather. It’s nonsense. It was so utterly stupid that I could genuinely feel my intelligence sapping away as every minute went by. It doesn’t even have the good sense to see how shit it is and make it work for it. There is no self-awareness whatsoever and, despite all of the terrible ideas you see on-screen, it still has the pompous belief that it has something important to say.

Geostorm isn’t even that memorable based on how bad it is. The plot is so utterly incomprehensible that you don’t really care what’s happening but there isn’t enough destruction or drama to distract you from it. It’s the least action packed action movie of all time. The only real sense of impending doom is the clock that is literally counting down to impending doom. None of the actors are right for their respective roles and seem incredibly uncomfortable during the whole film. I swear Gerard Butler’s mouth got smaller as the film went on so it became even harder to understand him. And, don’t ask me why, but I just don’t see Andy Garcia as someone who should be hired to play the president of the USA. Then there’s the CGI. Now I know there is bad CGI in a lot of films but this is one where the CGI holds the entire thing together. It is genuinely the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like nobody even tried. I assume whoever was hired to do the graphics realised it wasn’t going to be worth their time so they just let the intern do it. It’s abysmal and genuinely made me LOL throughout the entire film. Even the earliest CGI films don’t seem that bad in comparison to this.

Geostorm is basically the kind of film that Sharknado is but without the good sense to realise it. Yes, I think I’m actually trying to say that there is a film out there that is stupider than Sharknado. Compared to Geostorm I’d possibly even say that Sharknado is fucking Citizen Kane.