Total Recall
The mindtripper's guide to the galaxy.

Is there anything more frustrating in this world than organizing a trip away? Even with -- actually, especially with -- the modern day "conveniences" of the Internet, automatic phone bookings and fax facilities, it's an all-too-painful process that inevitably gets your hard-earned, well-deserved holiday off to a bad start.

Which is why a virtual vacation is such a great idea.

Total Recall's Doug Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) likewise decided that the concept had some merit. (We have so much in common.) Doug, a denizen of the shining, gleaming future, is a construction worker harboring a near-obsession with Mars. He's almost movie studio-like in his fixation. His wife Lori (Sharon Stone), somewhat suspiciously I would have thought, denies him his wish to visit the Red Planet and distracts him with sex (that bitch), so he takes himself to a bizarre hybrid of video arcade and dentist's office in order to go there the artificial way. (Wow, I bet that was a concept completely alien to Arnold. For the first time, that whole Junior thing makes sense.)

It is there, at Rekall Inc., where it all begins to go horribly wrong for poor Doug, and the movie's plot commences. 'Cause it so happens that our Doug was not always the happy jackhammer-wielding, Earth-dwelling husband that he believed himself to be. No, before his mind was altered by some nefarious, shadowy "them," he was a spy on Mars, and the holiday "memories" being implanted onto the scrapbook of his mind trigger within him actual memories of his former life. When the "them" bad guys find out about this (those bastards are watching everything -- yes, they even know you're reading this review right now), they decide to keep him in the dark about himself by, well, trying to kill him, but he escapes their wily clutches, makes it to Mars, and eventually meets up with the babe. Not the blond Sharon Stone-shaped one (who is, as it turns out, evil -- my suspicions confirmed! -- and gets killed as all evil-doers should), but the dark-haired hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold one, Melina, that we all knew would be along soon. She puts Doug in touch with the Martian underground movement, such as it is, and together they defeat the oppressive overlords of the hostile planet's dome-controlled life and make the planet safe for democracy... and also breathing.

Lots of car chases, gun fights and fisticuffs happen in the middle there, but that's basically it. And it's cool. It's the best science fiction movie on the Schwarzenegger resumé, with special effects of a many and varied nature, excellent taxi cabs that we have got to get happening, and I mentioned the gun fights, yes?

All in all, a satisfying intra-stellar romp with enough plot twists and turns to keep you guessing, enough faithfulness to Philip K. Dick's original story We Can Remember it for You Wholesale to please all but the most exacting, and enough attention to the conventions of the genre to make you feel like it's actually something completely new. Director Paul Verhoeven, pre-Show Girls and the (I now understand upon second viewing) unfairly maligned Starship Troopers, tells here a great tale, and despite the Total Recall 2070 debacle, and the fact that the forthcoming sequel will be directed by the recently-sucky Riker, this will go down as a classic genre film of the 1990's.

Inspired by this movie, meanwhile, I am now planning my next get-away in a similar non-reality-based vein. Obviously, we have not yet quite the technology, but I figure that I can do the fake-vacation thing exactly as Doug did -- though, hopefully, my former life as a Dungeon and Dragons role player will remain repressed within -- by surfing the web and reading someone or other's live journal of their trip to the supermarket, or the drive thru, or the mall or whatever.

Yes, someday soon my cherished holiday memories and those of that chick from Jennicam.com will be indistinguishable from each other. O brave new world, that hath such wonders in it. The future really is now.

DROOL FACTOR: Thinking about Arnold Schwarzenegger in reference to this category literally made me feel ill. No one else male springs to mind: this movie's testosterone quota was met when they cast him, and there are penalties if you exceed the cap. Both Sharon Stone as Lori and Rachel Ticotin as Melina are extremely lovely, though, for the interested among you.

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: The way the equally vapid eyes of Doug and Melina bug out when they are exposed to the fatal Martian atmosphere. Funny how they returned to normal-looking right away, though, when so many others in the city were left deformed by that very affliction. Also, there's this part where Arnold put a thing up his nose to remove a tracking chip, but that's too disgusting to even mention. Except that I just did.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: Sharon Stone's Lori kicks Arnold's ass, and believably, too. Melina is a resistance fighter, which you've gotta admire, and she kicked Lori's ass. There's also a woman with three breasts. This is a very confused movie.

-- Rachel Hyland

Total Recall is currently available on video and DVD. If it's out, it'll be back.

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