“You keeping up, baby? There is no Douglas Quaid, there never was.”

Justin’s rating: Get your patootey to bars

Justin’s review: Congress really needs to get on some sort of official legislation that regulates movie remakes. I don’t think it’d have to be that complicated, either. If a movie comes out and is a dud or is forgotten due to the ravages of time, then yeah, it’s open game for another go — like Ocean’s Eleven. But if the first movie was already so good, so iconic that it’s still getting rewatched and referenced even decades later, then there needs to be a total ban on Hollywood sullying its memory with another try.

Clearly, I think it was foolish to take one of the coolest scifi flicks that kicked off the 1990s and remake it into a two-hour-long techno-slog with less colorful characters, an absence of humor, and no Mars. But nobody listens to me, least of all Congress, so 2012 shoved Total Recall in our faces.

Total Recall wastes no time in asking us to swallow one of those ludicrous scifi setups that only gets dumber the more you think about it. The entire world’s been devastated by chemical warfare — except, for no real reason, Britain and Australia. So every day people from one side take a gigantic tunnel through the MIDDLE OF THE PLANET to go to work at the other. Why they don’t simply work in the area where they live — no good reason, other than to show off scifi tech. There are also robots and flying cars and terrorists… generic scifi dystopia stuff.

The plot? It’s pretty much the same as the first movie (which makes sense considering the shared source material), just without the outer space element. Quaid (Colin Farrell) goes to Rekall for a fake vacation memories, only to have his supposed real ones as a secret agent pop out. Betrayals, twists, turns, slick fight scenes, and an unreliable narrator ensue.

The glitzy cyberpunk setting is its only highlight, as high technology and seedy venues constantly find themselves in alignment. At times, Total Recall boasts Blade Runner-like eye candy that would’ve made a much younger me in a more simpler time drooling with appreciation. Now… it’s a backdrop without anything interesting going on in the foreground.

PK Dick’s original book focused on themes of identity and purpose in an increasingly soulless corporate age, and this 2012 version does take a stab at being philosophical at times. But more often than not, it tries to be Jason Bourne in Cyberpunkland, throwing a wealth of acting at us — Bryan Cranston! Kate Beckinsale! Jessica Biel! Bill Nighy! — while racing ahead of its ideas to the end credits.

Maybe this is simply an expensive object lesson to show how the slick CGI of the modern film era is no acceptable substitute for the imagination and passion — not to mention practical effects — of years past. I mean, have we lost our ability to have fun in movies? How can a crude, splashy flick from 1990 be such a riot and this iteration a rote, by-the-numbers scifi actioner?

I can answer that. It’s because with this amount of money on the line, nobody wants to take any risks any more. Just two years later, moviegoers would see yet another R-rated Verhoeven flick remade into a slick and disposable PG-13 wanna-be blockbuster with Robocop. It’s a sign of a defanged industry trying to have its cake and eat it too while making us pay for the privilege to watch. No thanks.

Intermission!

• How did Britain and Australia escape a global chemical devastation? That seems random. I mean, not even Antarctica? Greenland?
• Did that gun just shoot rope lights around that dude? Maybe they’re going to make him into a movie theater.
• “The Fall enslaves us all” is catchy!
• They brought back the mutant prostitute idea? That’s… a choice.
• The cameras they can fire into the room are pretty awesome
• So many bad wedding puns
• “I give good wife.” UGH
• The future is a giant parkour playground
• Hand phones are pretty groovy
• That woman in yellow is a nice nod to Arnie’s disguise
• Have fun counting all the times the bad guys say “MOVE IT!”