AllMovie

The last film of the millennium that attempts yet again to unsuccessfully revive the stalled big-screen career of "actor" Arnold Schwarzenegger, this shameless rip-off of the star's earlier hit Total Recall (1990) has none of that film's vigor, creativity, or sense of fun. Schwarzenegger shamelessly mugs and hams his way through the hackneyed material, out-acted at every turn by even animatronic dolls and animals. While the plot is ostensibly about DNA cloning, the film's vision of that science is so woefully misinformed that a child would be able to spot the absurd lengths to which a real-life moral and technological quandary has been fictionalized. A few clever running gags, some sharp special effects, and an intriguing subplot involving the ethical dilemma facing a heartbroken inventor (Robert Duvall) are the only reasons to see this pointless sci-fi mess. For a film that stitches together scenes, characters, and sequences cribbed liberally from so many other, better films, it's a truly hilarious irony that The 6th Day's subject matter is illegal cloning.