The makers of the new "X-Files" movie have done themselves a damage in coming up with the elongated title, "The X-Files: I Want to Believe." Really, it just invites a whole bunch of bad jokes which, unfortunately, are justified.
It’s easy to imagine how they might go: I want to believe another "X-Files" movie is necessary, 10 years after the first one came out cold and six years after the pioneering sci-fi series went cancelled the air. I want to credit it’s worth my time and money, even if I wasn’t a fervent devotee of the TV show. And I want to believe that Mulder and Scully still have the same chemistry they definitely did — a charitable reason the series developed a cult admirer base.
Well, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson do slip comfortably back into the roles that made them superstars in the 1990s, but the talking picture itself from director and "X-Files" series creator Chris Carter never feels like anything more than an extended episode. It lacks the complexity and scope required to rise to a camp rank; it doesn’t challenge us in any new or exciting ways. The big mystery? Just a rehashed urban legend.
In deference to the reveal’s many secrets and twists, we won’t give anything away here. We’ll just say the chart involves a missing persons case, severed body parts and some creepy hunts and chases at the end of one’s tether with the snow.
In writing the script, Carter and longtime collaborator Frank Spotnitz have come up with a stand-alone story, sole that doesn’t require expertise in "X-Files" minutiae to follow, although they’ve also left some nuggets fitting for loyal fans along the way. The title itself is one of them, sorta: It’s the phrase on a broadside that hung in Fox Mulder’s office.
These days, the former FBI agent spends all his time hiding in his work at home, clipping articles about the same kinds of unexplained phenomena he used to investigate and obsessing, still. Meanwhile, the no-nonsense Dana Scully, the doctor he was paired with, is practicing at a hospital. (The appropriately named Our Lady of Sorrows.)
But when FBI agents Whitney (a sparely scanty draw out Amanda Peet) and Drummy (rapper Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner) approach her about finding Mulder to aide them track down a missing colleague, she gets dragged in arrears into the scuffle, too. Billy Connolly co-stars as a fallen priest who may or may not be experiencing psychic visions; he and Anderson, as the ever-doubtful Scully, maintain a pair of intense exchanges.
But you immediately know it’s of no use when Scully says to Mulder: "I’m done chasing monsters in the dark." And that’s one of the few compelling parts of "I Want to Believe" — the fact that these two are once more searching for answers, together, bickering and bantering along the go to pieces b yield. Duchovny can pacify whip far-off a wicked one-liner, and his character’s dark humor is crucial when things impend to turn too self-serious. Anderson still brings benevolence and gravitas as his straight-laced foil.
Their work on "The X-Files" turns out to would rather been the best of both actors’ careers — though Duchovny was tremendous in the little-seen satire "The TV Set," and won a lead-actor Golden Globe this year for "Californication" — and it is indeed a pleasure to see them team up again. Too bad Carter and Co. couldn’t come up with a feature-length film that rises to the occasion. The definitive "X-Files" movie may not be peripheral exhausted there after all.
"The X-Files: I Want to Believe" is rated PG-13 and runs 104 minutes.
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