By J.E.
As a huge fan of the early seasons (1-6) of The X-Files television show, I was extremely thrilled to hear that a new stand-alone movie was being released. The film would revive characters that had been off the air since the seres bowed out in 2002, and was frequently described as an homage to the fans by writer/director Chris Carter. Never having been fond of the alien mythology arc (I’m still not sure I understood exactly what happened there), I was looking forward to this “stand-alone” movie.
I began to worry a bit as preliminary reviews from major critics heavily panned the flick. It was dull, they said, and lacked focus and excitement. I passed those off as being written by people unfamiliar with the series. But when fans also started slamming I Want to Believe, my heart sunk. Surely these people would have been pretty lenient, right? Nevertheless, I decided to skip The Dark Knight and spend my $8.50 to see Mulder and Scully in action again. What a huge mistake!
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The film’s timeline coincides with the television series, which is to say that six years have passed in the lives of Fox Mulder (played by David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Neither works for the FBI anymore. Scully is a surgeon at Our Lady of Sorrows hospital, while Mulder spends most of his time alone in a remote farmhouse clipping out newspaper stories of unexplained phenomena.
One day Scully is approached by Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Agent Mosley Drummy (Xzibit), who ask for her help in locating Mulder. No, they’re not looking to arrest him for past infractions of Bureau rules; instead, they need his assistance on a current case. A young FBI agent named Monica Bannan (Xantha Radley) has been abducted, and now they’ve got a disgraced Catholic priest saying that he has psychic visions of Bannan’s whereabouts and who has already led the FBI to a severed arm. Whitney and Drummy want Mulder to talk to Father Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly) to determine if the guy is a fraud or not.
At first, Mulder thinks this is merely an FBI ruse designed to lure him out into the open, but Scully immediately dismisses that notion. The FBI could get him at any time, she points out. So Mulder finally agrees to go see what Father Joseph has to say.
Quickly falling back into their old roles, Mulder is inclined to believe the man, while Scully can’t get past the fact that Father Joseph is a convicted pedophile. Even after Father Joseph leads the agents to more body parts and cries tears of blood, Scully refuses to accept that he has psychic abilities. Mulder, on the other hand, begins working the case in earnest, believing that there’s still time to save Agent Bannan.
The rest of the film then follows Mulder and Whitney’s investigation, as Scully retreats to the sidelines to deal with a terminally ill patient at the hospital. And in true X-Files fashion, even though the case is resolved, the question of whether or not Father Joseph was truly having psychic visions is not.
My Reaction: I was extremely disappointed with The X-Files: I Want to Believe, as it bore little resemblance to the show that I once loved so much. Instead of tight, taut storytelling, viewers got a rambling narrative that was slow to develop and then far too quickly resolved. Plus, I didn’t even think the story was a classic X-file of the sort that Mulder and Scully used to deal with on TV. Yes, the priest might have been having psychic visions, but that was so tame compared to some of the things Mulder and Scully saw over the years.
Moreover, the “B” storyline, that of Scully’s dying patient, served to slow the film down considerably. I realize that the storyline was supposed to show how Scully still has to struggle with her faith even though she’s no longer at the FBI (a Catholic promoting the use of aggressive experimental treatment instead of deferring to God’s will), but still… it was boring as hell and felt so out of place.
While Duchovny played Mulder much as he did on the TV show, managing to get a few good one-liners into the dialogue and everything, Anderson seemed to take Scully in a whole different direction. She was far more hostile, and, well, whiny than I remember her being from the TV show. How many times did she get in Father Joseph’s face about his past crimes? Yeah, we get it… he’s a pedophile and she abhors him. Just move on for the sake of plot advancement, please!
And what was with all the in-depth analysis about Father Joseph telling Scully, “Don’t give up”? That has to be one of the most commonplace phrases out there, yet Mulder and Scully spend several minutes debating the meaning. WTF? If someone said “Don’t give up” to me, I’d just be like, “Yeah, okay” and move on. For some reason, that scene totally annoyed me.
Frankly, I’m far too bummed about what I saw to continue writing out all the problems I had with the script. Suffice it to say that if this is indeed the last we ever see of The X-Files franchise, I’m going to pretend I Want to Believe never happened. I give this film 4.0 stars out of 10.