If not for the presence of gubernatorial groper Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines would have gone straight to video or perhaps christened as a Sci-Fi Channel Pictures Original, as it operates on such a careless C-level that it would fit comfortably among the fluff and fromage like Jackie Chan’s Metal Mayhem, Pythons II and whatever crap Dean Cain and/or Richard Greico have been roped into this week.

Future saviour of the human race John Connor is now in his 20s, a homeless drifter, a barbituate junkie and no longer played by Edward Furlong, but Nick Stahl. Trying to stay in hiding and “off the grid,” he naturally travels to that low-key, out-of-the-way little town known as Los Angeles. Unfortunately, so has a visitor from the future—a female Terminatrix robot assassin (utterly talentless and future erotic thriller star Kristanna Loken) bent on snuffing Connor out and
bringing about the end of humanity. Fortunately, Arnold’s T-1000 cyborg-bodyguard has come back, too.

Thus begins an extended game of cat and mouse with action so mindless and uninvolving that it treats the characters as if they were Looney Tunes. Arnold and his charges (including vet assistant Claire Danes) drive, run and hide from the Terminatrix, and the Terminatrix shows up to do battle. Over and over again. Aside from an early street chase t makes a point to demolish everything, there’s no bravura set piece offered to distinguish T3 from, say, an episode of “JAG.”

Instead of sticking to the straight, serious action-oriented sci-fi of the first two films, T3 ventures into the realm of cheap comedy, with Arnold donning star-shaped, sparkle-adorned sunglasses and uttering quips like “She’ll be back” and “Talk to the hand.” Talk to the hand? That line was already tired by the time Fran Drescher put it in that Beautician and the Beast movie back in 1997. In fact, T3 plays the cheesy hand with every card dealt, to the point where it becomes a parody of itself ... and not a good one at that.

For all the suspense he put into Breakdown and the controlled pacing of U-571, director Jonathan Mostow sure blows it here. Things are competent, but since this isn’t a work of his own creation, he doesn’t seem quite sure what to do with it. James Cameron would know, but apparently he was too busy with his underwater explorations to care. (I’m not sure why Linda Hamilton didn’t even return—vacuuming doesn’t take *that* long—but her move to not get involved now seems like a wise one.) All in all, this belated entry doesn’t even feel like part of the franchise, but rather a half-baked rip-off issued by the coattail-riding likes of Roger Corman.

The DVD has a whole extra disc’s worth of featurettes, deleted scenes and other bells and whistles, but I so disliked the film I didn’t want to see another minute associated with it.

Rod Lott is the publisher of Hitch Magazine: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity.