'Total Recall' – Mindless fun

April 16, 2012

By Tim Angerame, Entertainment Editor

Back in the 80’s and 90’s, everybody went crazy over Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. The heart pounding action! The nail biting climaxes! That ridiculous accent! Schwarzenegger isn’t just a gimmick either. His movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day is often seen as one of the greatest sequels of all time.

To me, however, his craziest movie this side of Commando would have to be 1990’s Total Recall. In this movie Schwarzenegger plays a construction worker in 2084 named Douglas Quaid who finds out he’s actually a memory wiped man named Houser, but you won’t be calling him either of these names. You’ll probably be calling him Schwarzenegger throughout the entire movie.

Anyway, he finds this out by going to a travel agency called Rekall who rather than send you somewhere on a vacation, they implant the memory of it as a cheaper alternative. He asks to be a secret agent on Mars but before they inject the memory, he goes crazy because he already remembers doing something like this in the real world.
Quaid realizes his life is a lie, and that his wife Lori (Sharon Stone) was actually hired to keep an eye on him. He discovers a video he made of himself in case his memory got wiped. His former self, Houser, tells him to “get your ass to Mars”, and the story goes from there.

You won’t believe the number of stupid faces made in the film. The visuals and characters are extremely colorful. Schwarzenegger also comes across many odd sights on his odyssey to Mars, from Earth’s unsettling robotic cab drivers known as Johnnycab to a woman with three breasts!

Despite all of this insanity, Total Recall is a very entertaining movie to watch. The characters are a bit forgettable. Despite their colorful physical appearances, most of the characters didn’t have a colorful personality to match it. Another sci-fi movie, 2005’s Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had a plethora of colorful characters. However these characters had very distinct personalities that matched their appearances. From the extremely corporate Vogons, to Marvin, the constantly depressed robot.

I did not see this personality development in Total Recall, and there was a human cab driver on Mars who I thought was a rip off of Argyle from Die Hard. Despite this, the story was entertaining and full of action. If you see this movie in a bargain bin somewhere, definitely check it out. You won’t forget it.

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'Total Recall' – Mindless fun

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