There is so much lacking in Geostorm that in comparison all other disaster movies seem like top-notch films with oodles of depth and plot.

Geostorm had been in hot waters since it started production, with re-shootings, recasting and eventually the additions of a new producer and a stand-in director to help clean up the mess. Even though the movie got patched up, (and that is evident from the story-scars you see on-screen), the cosmetic mess is as bad as its internal surgery. Sometimes a lost case is a lost case.

When the movie opens, a little girl’s voice-over tells us that the world comes to understand and accept global warming and its disastrous effects on the climate. To help save Earth, the world comes together and makes a coalition of nations to tackle the problem, with a satellite system in outer space called Dutch Boy, which controls the weather.

Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) is the man who designed Dutch Boy, with an international group of skilled engineers and scientists on the space station. Jake, however, is sacked from his job when he doesn’t obey protocol and launches the Dutch Boy into action before it is officially in operation to save South Asia from a climate disaster.

Three years later, mysteriously, a little rural village in Afghanistan is found frozen. To investigate matters Max Lawson (Jim Sturgess), also Jake’s younger brother, is put in charge. It seems that Dutch Boy is malfunctioning, and Jake is called back to fix things. By now, Jake is a single father to Hannah (Talitha Bateman), and wallows in sadness. In his spare time, which is all the time he has right now, he fixes his old car while gulping down beer in the middle of the day. His drunk wallowing is a minor inconvenience to both, his brother and the U.S. government, as he is sent to space in one of the many, many space shuttles ready at the launch site; how is the government even affording such a budget, we would never know.

Geostorm is Dean Devlin’s feature film debut. Even though you haven’t seen him directing a film, you know of his screenplays and productions – Independence Day, Stargate, Godzilla, with co-producer and director Roland Emmerich, and on television Leverage (where he directed many episodes) and The Librarian movies.

Geostorm, however, is a box of mistakes. Not only is it wrongly timed, as the world is suffering from the natural disaster this summer, it’s also not a well put-together production. Its chief problem is a weak script from Paul Guyot co-written by Devlin, and unfocused editing from three editors Chris Lebenzon, John Refoua and Ron Rosen (Lebenzon is a regular of Tim Burton and Geostorm’s uncredited producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who was brought in to reset a lot of the movie’s inconsistencies).

Even the actors looked lost and washed out, ranging from bad to neutral. Specifically, Andy García and Ed Harris as President and Secretary of State are professionally neutral; Abbie Cornish and Sturgess are amateurish at best. Gerard Butler only gruffs and puffs pointlessly.

Geostorm isn’t campy, grave or well made. It’s simply a forgettable mess.