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Critic Reviews

43

Metascore

Based on 41 critic reviews provided by Metacritic.com
63
Strip away the video-game visual effects, the endless chases and zero gravity shootouts, and Total Recall comes down to this: What is reality?
60
The outcome is engaging enough, although not entirely satisfying from either a genre or narrative standpoint, lacking both substance and a degree of imagination.
55
The two films have the same underlying bone structure, sure, but this new Total Recall is made of more serious, more humorless stuff. It looks simultaneously lavish and interchangeable in its explosions and shoot-em-ups with a dozen other recent action movies, and in its sci-fi stylings with a dozen others in the genre.
50
This one is somberly kinetic and joyless.
50
For all of its dazzlingly rendered cityscapes and nonstop action, this revamped Total Recall is a bland thing - bloodless, airless, humorless, featureless. With or without the triple-bosomed prostitute.
50
Instead of drawing the audience in, the action scenes merely blur together. And the intriguing, thoughtful concepts at the story's core are glossed over.
50
Set in a high-tech yet shabby future, the remake of Total Recall is a fully realized piece of production design. But its script, credited to six authors, is more like a preliminary sketch.
40
Like a drug that starts with a rush and ends with a headache, Total Recall is too much of a good thing.
30
The remake has no grace notes, or grace, no nuance, no humanity, no character quirks, no surprises in the dialogue and no humor.
25
Since the new Recall is totally witless, don't expect laughs. Originality and coherence are also notably MIA.
20
There's something sadly poetic about a movie dealing with disappearing memories that vanishes from your mind while you watch it.
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