Movies You Aught Not Watch: The 6th Day
Beginning this week, and updated every Wednesday through the end of 2010, the Film Yap will present "Movies You Aught Not Watch: The Decade's 52 Worst Films."
We will write this alphabetically ordered, weekly feature remembering the most wretched cinematic offerings released between 2000 and 2009. Hollywood rarely seems to learn from its history of bad films, but moviegoers are the ones doomed when that history repeats. On this list are movies bad enough to truly test your will.
Be sure to check back every Wednesday for a new installment of "Movies You Aught Not Watch."
"The 6th Day" Rated PG-13 2000
Most Arnold Schwarzenegger movie soundtracks crank up the volume. “The 6th Day” might have been the first intentionally heightened to drown laughter at poor quality.
Schwarzenegger can say California gubernatorial duties forced him out of moviemaking. A likelier culprit would be the law of diminishing box-office returns on this 2000 sci-fi turkey, which grossed less than $100 million globally despite his $25-million salary. It would continue to be a bad decade for Schwarzenegger (“Collateral Damage,” anyone?) before he hung it up to be the Governator.
In “The 6th Day,” Schwarzenegger is Adam Gibson, a pilot in 2015 who’s been illegally cloned and takes action to uncover a conspiracy and save his family.
Cormac and Marianne Wibberley — a husband-wife screenwriting team also responsible for “I Spy” and “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” — set their template for a decade of verve-free action. Schwarzenegger actually utters, “I might be back.”
“The 6th Day” could be forgiven its complete lack of intelligence and use of Michael Rapaport in a supporting role if the action scenes weren’t so deadening and pedestrian — the usual car chases and gunfights, only watered down for a PG-13 rating.
Yet nothing is diluted more than Arnie, who seems less an action star here than a politician campaigning for votes. “The 6th Day” promotes the thought that the days of antiquity in America somehow felt better, calmer, richer. They certainly did … because that’s when Schwarzenegger movies still were fun to watch.