Sharon Stone is smoking hot, but that's it!!

Rating: 2/10 (4 July 2010)

I used to like this movie. but now that I've seen it again on a Full HD-TV, I can see how bad it really is.
The set-pieces are so lame. The cities on Mars look like something from a low-budget TV-show. The mountains and the sky are clearly paintings. The puppets replacing Arnold and other actors are badly made. Kuato, the alien-baby stuck on a guys chest is the worst made puppet in the film. Chucky was more convincing in Child's Play two years prior to this movie.
The air bursting through the windows where people live at the end look really bad. All in all the special effects are awful, even for a movie at that time.
Aliens from 1986 have more convincing special effects and still looks good today, 24 years later. Besides from one scene shot outside, the entire movie is shot on various sound stages. And it makes the movie look extremely low-budget although I'm sure it was very expensive at the time.
The bad-guys are too much cliché. Ronny Cox was so much better in Robocop.
Michael Ironside is also wasted here. He was much better in Starship Troopers.
Even the fun grotescue violence, that is Verhoevens trademark and the sometimes funny scenes can't save this crap.
The way too obvious product placement made me sick. In two or three scenes, it becomes very clear what paid for this entire movie and Arnie's presumably very large paycheck.
The only good thing about a movie that looks like a low-budget sci-fi today, is Sharon Stone. She was incredibly sexy and every time she appeared in a scene, me and my buddy started paying attention to the movie again, at least while she was on the screen. Why Arnies character, Quaid, would prefer Rachel Ticotin over Sharon Stone is a bigger and much more interesting mystery than whether or not the whole thing is a dream in Quaids head.
And the plot does'nt make sense. Others have commented on the many plot-holes, so I won't be getting into that.
I give it 2 stars because of Sharon Stone. The rest of the movie sucks.