A documentary by George Casey. Narrated by Kevin Bacon. Unrated.

Got a cloud or smoke fetish? If you do, Forces of Nature will endear itself to you as more than just an aloof perusal of geological and meteorological temper tantrums.

But for storm-porn lovers enraptured by live disaster imagery, Forces of Nature is disappointingly short on heartstopping visuals. What it's long on is repetition--of roiling mushroom clouds composed of dust, ash, and rain that are eerily reminiscent of the post ­World Trade Center street footage and frequently fill the five-storey Omnimax screen. Blinded by smoke and then subjected repeatedly to the bleak aftermath of volcanoes, earthquakes, and tornadoes, we're as dissatisfied by the lack of action as po-faced Helen Hunt was when she failed to catch the F5 in Twister.

Blame Hollywood. Director George Casey may have attempted to merge Tinseltown's sophisticated technology with the integrity of those sloppy home videos in which furious black tornado columns hurtle dizzyingly toward the camera. But Casey overlooked the thrill factor. Where the fictional Twister flung a heifer through the air like a steak spitball, what we get here is a contented cow half-heartedly mooing. "They could at least have shown a cat flying past," a friend moaned. Amateur footage, supplemented by ad-libbed hollers of amazement, conveys a knee-trembling sense of panic. Forces of Nature, 10 years in the making and without conflict, panic, or suspense, is boring.

The film's emphasis on aftermath, when dazed victims the world over paw through the pick-up sticks that were once their houses, makes you wonder how Forces of Nature warranted the IMAX treatment. When narrator Kevin Bacon intones that people should build safer structures, you'd be forgiven for suspecting that the insurance company sponsoring the National Geographic ­produced film had script input.

That said, Forces of Nature will interest anyone who's hot for talk of pyroclastic flows. Like a textbook fattened with a few arresting pictures, the 40-minute film is divided into three segments--"Volcanoes", "Earthquakes", and "Tornadoes"--wherein experts explain how each disaster occurs. The three scientists profiled declare they aspire to forecast disasters in order to save lives. None convinces us that their job rocks their world.

We've become spoiled by fictional disaster movies addled with outrageous digital effects, and we crave spectacle with our statistics, especially when the film's title suggests as much. As Dennis (Day After Tomorrow) Quaid, Pierce (Dante's Peak) Brosnan, and Charlton (Earthquake) Heston did before us, we expect to go rigid with stupefaction watching our world explode into smithereens. For lovers of storm porn, Forces of Nature's comparative lack of "oooooh!" factor makes it the equivalent of observing a tumble of messy bedclothes and stubbed-out cigarettes after the dirty deed's been done.