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The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Genre: Sci-Fi, Drama, Thriller
Rated: PG-13
Directed
by: Chris Carter
Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Mitch Pileggi, Billy Connolly, Amanda Peet
Released by: 20th Century Fox
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Short: The new feature-length version of the TV show feels like, well, a feature-length version of the TV show. |
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For X-philes only
The X-Files Movie is Mysteriously Lackluster
The press notes for the new X-Files movie quote Chris Carter, the TV show's creator and the film's director, as saying, "We want to scare the pants off of everyone in the audience."
One moment, please.
Nope. The pants are still on.
The film version of the hit mystery show left us unscared, unamused, unmoved and uninterested. Carter and his team have squandered the opportunity to make a great TV show into a great movie, à la the Fugitive. Only hardcore fans of the show are likely to care much.
The film opens to find former FBI agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) working as a pediatrician and her former partner Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) fired by the FBI and living a life of bearded seclusion, yet still obsessing over the paranormal. Meanwhile, a third FBI agent has disappeared in the snows of West Virginia, and Mulder and Scully end up back in service to search for her. Along the way, they enlist a defrocked priest (Billy Connolly, the film's high point) with a sixth sense to help find the perpetrators—warning: they're involved in something icky.
The problem is, none of it adds up to much. The action sequences are few and far between, as well as poorly executed (even we know not to shout to your partner in the middle of a stakeout). Much has been made in the chat-o-sphere that this movie will finally show the romance between Mulder and Scully, but the heat between them would barely melt an Appalachian snowflake. The villains: disturbing, yes, but nothing you couldn't imagine on the small screen. Same with the cinematography.
Given that you can get your X-Files fix on DVDs of the series, the biggest mystery of this movie is, "Why was it made?"
Reviewed by Andrew Bender
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(Updated 07/25/08 KR) |
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