Time Has Not Been Kind To Total Recall

Rating: Null/10 (1 January 2001)

Watching the great science fiction films, it's clear that there is one great truth: If you create a world (diagetically, not like a different, imaginary planent), sometimes the legacy of the film can survive improvements in technology, but if you limit your scope, soundstages will always look like soundstages and that gets tacky as time passes. The world of Blade Runner, for example, is so complete that even though the special effects in the film are dated, the world remains entrancing. Ditto the Star Wars movies. There's a unity of vision between writer, director, production designer, and cinematographer that's wonderful. In Paul Verhoven's Total Recall, on the other hand, Mars is limited to two or three ugly stage sets. Ditto futuristic Earth. The special effects remain impressive, but the tin-eared script and frequently ugly visuals drag the film down. Only ten years after its release, it looks like a museum piece.
This is additionally unfortunate because the story is more than provocative enough. Based on a nifty Phillip K. Dick story, Total Recall is about construction worker Donald Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a man haunted by bad dreams about Mars that even his hottie wife (Sharon Stone) can't get rid of. When Quaid goes to a company that manufactures vacation memories for people without the time or money to take the vacations, it becomes clear that something is very wrong with him. Quaid is not Quaid at all. He is a secret agent and his whole life is sham. And off to Mars goes Quaid to try to sort out what's real and what's illusion.
Whereas the set designs for Verhoven's Robocop were perfectly in fitting with the society on the brink of martial law being depicted, Total Recall's world just looks like it's the late 1980s translated to the far future. The costumes? Pretty much late 80s. The hair? Again. The production design owes more to Miami Vice than to any creativity on the producers part.
As a director, Paul Verhoven is the master of a kind of hilariously sadistic ultraviolence. He's proven that he can handle this trademark violence both straightfaced (Basic Instinct) and with a satiric smirk (Starship Troopers). On Total Recall he handles the special effects, especially the make-up/gore effects, wonderfully. However, he's undone by the aforementioned production design. Every metal door looks plastic. Every Martian cave wall looks like styrofoam. There's never any sense that the movie takes place in any location besides a studio's backlot. Ace cinematographer Jost Vocano is actually undone by his skill. A DP less effective might have produced images that didn't so completely emphasize the artifice.
Another Verhoven trait is horrible casting. The guy doesn't really look for actors, he places faces on a landscape. Basic Instinct is such an effective film (say whatever you want about its quality) because he was actually working with a cast of talented professionals. But in most of his films, especially Total Recall, the casting is just painful. Ah-nold is Ah-nold. He can't act, but his physical presence is what people go to see. Or at least *went* to see. Stone is also a hoot in her limited part, but if she's the only person in your movie actually acting... Well, that's not good news. Verhoven regular baddie Michael Ironside is typically hammy, but from there the cast just goes downhill. Why were Rachael Ticotin, Ronny Cox, Marshall Bell, and Mel Johnson Jr. doing with large roles in a major motion picture? Destroying it. The supporting performances are laughable, and this is the kind of movie where even the one-line roles are badly done. Basically, with a huge budget, Verhoven didn't feel the need to work with professional actors. And he pays the price.
As appealing as it is when the characters are running around in circles, there's very little point. The wonderful premise is basically wasted and most of Ah-nold's witty comeback lines fall short. I'd give this one a 5/10.