Oh dear.

Rating: 1/10 (26 October 1998)

I was a big fan of the original. The plot was a good one, the actors convincing, even Arnie (although perhaps having 42 words in the entire film helped.)and the action took place largely at night. Five minutes into T2 when Arnie has killed no-one and nicked one guy's sunglasses, I thought *uh-oh* - one-liner ahoy, and sure enough, later one of many such gut-wrenchingly bad lines emerges, delivered with enough lack of Acting ability to cover his compatriots in splinters. Now sometimes a Movie can be salvaged by it's co-stars, but unfortunately although Linda Hamilton is the only member of the cast that emerges with any credibility, the young John Connor is so incredibly irritating that 30 minutes into the film, I wanted to kill him myself. That leaves the quintessential "Baddie" to sustain some sort of suspense and danger. Alas, James was still obviously obsessed with the morphing techniques he discovered while making "The Abyss" with the result that we end up with a robot that is supposed to be made up of liquid metal capable of altering it's colour, texture and size, and even reforming itself. All movies of this type call for a certain degree of suspension of disbelief, but this is just ludicrous. Even in "non-liquid" mode, the new wimpy looking terminator runs around with his head inclined - apparently this is supposed to be frightening. Throughout the film, we have lots of explosions, laughable dialog and in the end, Arnie the philosophical friendly cyborg. This film could have been a damn sight better, even with Arnie in the lead, but this seems to have been targeted at a preview audience of teenagers in the mid-west with all the ingredients that they tend to expect. It is quite simply yet another standard formulaic attempt to make money, not a decent film, but hey, Isn't that what Hollywood is about?
Dan Marcus