A bad film that is surprisingly consumable.
Brazenly corny and watchably stupid, Dean Devlin's Geostorm only manages to transcend its palpable sense of banality through the sheer force of its own unashamed silliness. Not only are the stakes ratcheted up to gloriously fatuous levels – all the storms on Earth are set to interlock into a worldwide, extinction-level cataclysm – but the emotional payoffs are so smackingly obvious that one is almost moved to a sense of bemused awe.
This is a film that begins with the promise of destruction, distracts the audience with a contrived government conspiracy plot, and ends on a teary reunion of a young, unnamed Indian boy with his beloved pet dog. Roland Emmerich would be so proud.
Devlin, of course, is the star producer behind some of Emmerich's own disaster oeuvre, having worked on Independence Day and Godzilla (although he was not involved in The Day After Tomorrow or 2012, the two films Geostorm is most closely quoting). With his newest, Devlin, directing his first feature, cautiously cleaves closely to the fetishistic destruction and corny united-world narratives that Emmerich helped popularize. And while Geostorm doesn't reach the dizzying, clunky earnestness and glorious visual spectacle of its immediate spiritual genre forebears, it is possessed of a bold Hollywood artificiality that is, in its own quaint way, kind of charming.
It is the near future, and climate change has forced 19 nations to band together and hastily construct a worldwide network of satellites that can, essentially, keep any and every storm at bay. If the network fails, people in deserts can freeze to death, etc. etc. Gerard Butler – sporting an implacable accent that is lost somewhere between Houston and Edinburgh – plays the astral engineer who built the satellites, and it's amusing to ponder that American audiences are expected to buy Butler as an astral engineer. Although the network – nicknamed Dutchboy – is on the cusp of being handed over to the world at large, becoming global property, a series of glitches, computer viruses, and mysterious murders point to dirty work afoot.
Butler, his brother (Jim Sturgess), a German space captain (Alexandra Maria Lara), a steely Secret Service agent (Abbie Cornish), an aging politico (Ed Harris), and the President (Andy Garcia) must work together to uncover a shadowy conspiracy that audiences are likely to predict. Also keep and eye out for Mare Winningham who appears for all of one scene.
The tropes of disaster movies were codified as early as the days of Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno), and the ensuing decades have seen little to rattle the zeitgeist. Geostorm, far from wanting to push the genre into new territory, seems to revel contentedly in its own clichés.
One can place Geostorm next to any of the disaster films of the last 10 to 15 years and find direct, scene-by-scene parallels. Present is the stern narration, the opening scenes of mysterious mass death, the multi-culti team of international brothers and sisters, the one helpless man whom no one will believe, and the sour bureaucrats who only serve to stand in the (usually American) hero's way. And yes, as mentioned above, a teary reunion with a dog.
Any reasonable filmgoer should expect to lose patience with the expected plot beats and familiar characters, and they would be welcome to leave the theater thinking they have seen a supremely dumb film. Which they have. However, Geostorm's slick production values, and shop-worn functional simplicity aid it toward the realm of comforting dumbness tonic. It may be bad, but it goes down so smooth.
The Verdict
Geostorm cannot be defended in terms of striking originality, wit, or even basic intelligence, but its affable slickness make it a bad film that is surprisingly consumable.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire