Mostly Martian cheese, and shameless product placement.

Rating: Null/10 (1 December 2004)

'Total Recall', which I bought for just over $5 for the remastered special widescreen edition DVD, is a good example of what is happening to movies just 10 to 15 years old. First, they are usually not quite as good as we remember them, and second, the DVD price is getting dirt cheap. Who could have imagined just 20 years ago that for a mere five bucks or so, you could own a copy of a feature-length movie, with a crisp and detailed picture, surround sound, and all kinds of extras?? You get all that in 'Total Recall', although it is more cheese than you can swallow in one sitting. I enjoyed it enough, again, after all these years. California's Governor, Arnold, does a respectable job. And here we see Sharon Stone before she hit it big with 'Basic Instinct.' But the story, while inventive, has a screenplay which falls flat very often.
Some SPOILERS follow, you may not want to read further. Just one example of how the story goes into the absurd. Quaid comes home after some guys try to kill him, he turns out the lights and tells his 'wife' (Stone) to get down. Then, she starts shooting at him, they fight, he throws her, they fight more violently, he gets the upper hand, then they calmly sit down and start talking about how she isn't (she says) really his wife, his memories were manipulated and she was planted as part of a bigger scheme. Just couldn't happen that way.
More SPOILERS ... Anyway, we think Quaid ends up on Mars later, but then something happens to make us wonder if it is part of his 'Rekall' dream implanting. But in the end, when some of the Earthlings inhabiting the Mars settlement start to suffer oxygen deprivement, Quaid listens to the alien sticking out of another man's belly, starts the big ancient generators, and everyone gets saved by the resultant outflowing of oxygen. The pink skies become blue, clouds form, and pretty soon Mars looks just like Earth. Billions of pounds of cheese.