Total Recall is visually stunning, you shouldn't need any other reason to go see it. The city looks far from original, in fact it is very reminiscent of Blade Runner, but it is is so much grander than Blade Runner that it is easily forgivable. Basically, anyone hoping to see Ridley Scott and his great "world building" take a stab at another Blade Runner with today's technology should give up that hope, this movie will never be outdone in the "Believable World Building" department. When the world goes to hell and humanity really has no other options but to start building "up" to survive in the few habitable parts of Earth we will look back at the Total Recall remake and say that it was more realistic.
The second best part of the movie is obviously that it has very attractive female stars. The director payed special attention to making sure that Kate Beckinsale's white cotton panty clad butt did not accidentally get left out of her one skin scene in the movie, despite the scene being relatively serious. Even fully clothed Beckinsale is extremely hot when she is pissed off and rampaging. Jessica Biel, often cast as "the sexy one" these days seemed dressed down and plain compared to Beckinsale, maybe it was intentional. In fact Biel only smiles once that I can remember in the whole film, but it definitely perked up a rather dreary scene.
The homages to the original movie are pretty well done. We do see three nipples, I know that it is a spoiler, but some people don't see movies without nipple in them, and this one has three! I thought that we were just going to get triple cleavage based on the trailer and comic con, but I was pleasantly surprised. There are some other homages that are pretty iconic that I wont spoil, but I think that most will appreciate.
Now it is time for criticism. The big picture problem in this movie starts out very good; I'm talking about the new equivalent to Mars being without oxygen. After the introduction of the problem the interesting-ness quickly starts to fade as they start adding on aspects of other movies that are just so extremely obvious. If you are seeing this movie, then you've most likely seen those other movies, and the plot points that they use weren't the most original in those other movies. When the climax finally hits, again, it is ripped from another movie.
The big problem that I think everyone will notice in the first 30 seconds of the movie is that they killed one of the most important plot points of the original movie right off the bat. They try to play ambiguous later on, but unless you are really slow you aren't going to fall for it as an audience member; it's believable to the characters though. There is a little cheap laugh at the end that kind of has fun with it though.
As unoriginal as the story is I found it easy to let it slide. Whenever my hopes for something original were dashed the story kept on running smoothly. The story is nothing new, but it still flows smoothly and works well.
I say that it is a must see simply for the visuals, consider the story a bonus.