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The X-Files: I Want To Believe
Ten years after the first X-Files movie, and seven years since the long-running TV show gave up the ghost; this sequel proves a grave disappointment.
Yes, Mulder and Scully are back in the estimable forms of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, and yes writer-director Chris Carter is pulling the strings (along with X-perienced co-writer Frank Spotnitz), but somewhere in the snowy wastes of time the magic has vanished without a trace. Fans will be dismayed by a scenario involving minimal paranormal paranoia but plenty of pretentious soul-searching. The FBI welcomes an initially bearded Mulder back into the fold when one of its own goes missing and a psychic offers up the best lead – a neatly severed arm buried in the ice. Quite why agent Dakota Whitney – Amanda Peet – feels the need to have Mulder on hand isn’t satisfactorily explained – it’s the psychic (pedophile ex-priest Father Joe) who actually drives the investigation. Mulder’s role is to believe him – quite a feat, given Billy Connolly’s unconvincingly tremulous performance. As for Scully, she’s sidetracked for long stretches by a supposedly thorny ethical dilemma – in reality a tedious and trite subplot involving a terminally ill child whose only hope is radical, risky stem cell surgery. (So radical Dr Dana has to Google it.)
The mystery dresses up tawdry secondhand sleaze – abducted women, gay Russian heavies – in phony theological debate. Which wouldn’t be so bad if Carter carried it off with a modicum of style. But no. The visuals have a TV flatness – when in doubt (which is often) Carter cuts between meaningless glances – and the scenes limp from cliché to cliché. “I want a car ready,” Mulder demands of the FBI – as if they had to build it from scratch. “What have you done?” wonders Dakota, one of the Bureau’s less perceptive agents, after Mulder shaves. “A vision if ever I had one,” murmurs Father Joe when Scully shows up on his doorstep.
Carter even manages to fumble ongoing developments in the Mulder-Scully soap opera. It doesn’t help that he appears to have cut out several key linking scenes in a bid to bring the show in at a reasonably trim 104 minutes (sometimes a movie seems longer the more you cut it). To be fair, things perk up slightly with a gruesome revelation late in the day – and the sudden demise of one of the movie’s weaker actors – but it’s not enough to save this singularly lackluster effort from its own ineptitude. It’s out there, all right; way, way out there, but the truth is this X-Files movie is a damp squib, a sorry end to a cult that has run its course. Tom Charity 
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