The X-Files: I Want to Believe

Walking into The X-Files: I Want to Believe, I pretty much knew I probably wasn't going to be the audience this movie was looking for. I was never a devoted viewer of the TV show, though I enjoyed it occasionally, and my memories of the original 1998 X-Files movie are sketchy at best. Having seen the film, I can safely say that I don't know what audience this movie is looking for. Original series creator Chris Carter co-wrote and directed this uneven and lethargic reunion special. And yes, I Want to Believe does come across more as a really long reunion special episode of the TV series, rather than an actual movie. Unless you've been dying to see agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) back together, you'll be disappointed. Even if you have been, you might still be disappointed, as the two stars spend a large part of this film separate from each other.

The film opens promisingly enough with an attention-grabbing opening sequence where a white-haired old man is leading a team of FBI agents through a barren winter landscape. The man is Father Joe (Billy Connelly), a disgraced pedophile priest who is using his psychic powers to lead the team to the spot where a missing FBI agent might be hidden. We see some flashes of Joe's psychic visions, where the woman is attacked by some mysterious assailants. The way the film edits together the search party with the flashback of the incident creates some great atmosphere, and puts us in the right mood for what is almost certain to be an intriguing thrill ride. If only I had known that the film's most thrilling sequence comes right at the beginning, I wouldn't have gotten my hopes up. What Joe and the agents discover in that field of snow, I will not reveal, but I will say it leads to Mulder and Scully (who are both out of the FBI, and living their own lives) being forced to work together again.

Scully now works as a doctor at a Catholic hospital, where her main concern is caring for a young boy with a dangerous brain disease, and her fight to keep him alive. Mulder has since gone into isolation, and is now holed up in his home with a "mountain man" beard (the sure sign of isolation in any movie), and newspaper clippings lining the walls about the paranormal. Scully is the first to be approached about helping out the FBI with their latest case, given her past experience with strange and unexplained occurrences, and she is eventually able to talk Mulder into rejoining the team as well. They are paired up with agents Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet), who has an open mind about Mulder's obsession with the unexplained, as well as Father Joe's claims of being a psychic, and the much more narrow-minded Mosley Drummy (rap artist "Xzbit"), who thinks the priest is making up his powers to cover up his knowledge and possible personal connection to the crime. Both Mulder and Scully get involved in this bizarre case which includes shady Russians, a lot of dogs, and...well, not a whole lot else.

The X-Files seems to be constantly on the brink of hitting upon something, or cranking up the suspense a little. Oddly enough, it never does. It simply meanders through its undercooked plot of pedophile priests with supernatural powers, and FBI agents who either believe or don't believe what is going on in front of them, and restate their belief over and over again. This is the kind of movie where a character exists simply to doubt what is right in front of his eyes for no other reason than the plot requires them to. (If I saw a guy's eyes turn red, and start shedding tears of blood, I think I'd be a bit more open to the suggestion that something's not quite right here.) The story the movie tells probably wouldn't cut it on a lesser episode of the TV series, and the fact that it was considered worthy to base a movie around it some six years after the show went off the air seems a bit odd. There's no real energy on display, no real spark of innovation, and nothing really here to excite or intrigue aside from a few rare stand out scenes. It's not until the film's final 10 minutes or so that the tension finally starts to build just a little, but it's once again deflated with how quickly and effortlessly it is resolved.

The film's decision to keep Mulder and Scully apart as often as possible also seems quite odd, since it was their opposite chemistry that made them so appealing in the first place. Here, Scully exists in the film's main plot to pop up once in a while to talk to Scully about the case, or confront Father Joe in one scene. Most of her screen time is devoted to a subplot where she fights to keep medical aid active for a sick little boy, with her officials at the hospital all demanding that they drop the patient, as nothing can be done to save him. Even when the two stars are actually together, there's seldom any sparks. If the two are so close that they are sharing a bed in one scene, why do they still refer to each other constantly by their last names? What hurts even more is that Duchovny and Anderson seem to have lost what they once brought to their characters and each other. While never entirely bad, both performances seem somewhat stiff and uncomfortable, as if it was hard for both of them to get back into their most famous roles after so long. If this movie was intended to be a big reunion for the still devoted fans, I don't see how they're going to be excited over the little that is on display here.

If a movie like The Dark Knight is a summer movie that should not be missed, then The X-Files: I Want to Believe is a curious little summer oddity that seems to be speaking to no one in particular. It doesn't do anything to stand out in the crowded market, and considering most of the competition, that's just not going to cut it. Somehow, Carter was able to fool Fox into giving him a theatrical budget for something that probably would be deemed pretty mediocre by the fans if it were part of the series. The fans deserve more than what they've been given here, and so do movie goers in general.

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