X-Files: I want to Believe
THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS AND HATEFUL AND HURTFUL LANGUGE. If you are a fan of the X-Files I actually suggest you read on, but if you’re that dedicated and want to see it for yourself, I respect that too. The bottom line, IT SUCKED! It sucked so bad that when my fourteen-year-old daughter was soiling her diaper it was more interesting than what was on the screen. Fox Mulder played by the aging David Duncovny and Dana Scully played by the also aging Gillian Anderson must of got a serious paycheck to even walk on the set of this boring, plot less, misdirected piece of excrement.
X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE. Has the perfect title you want to believe that you are actually watching an X-File except some overly long melodrama which is a big “F” you to the fans. The “plot” is as follows Scully gets word of an abducted FBI agent and the only link to this agent is a local psychic priest named “Uncle Joe” played by the wasted talent of Billy Connolly. Scully who is a doctor a seven-year “new” career after the television show ended, is bought from her job for her expertise. And of course she seeks out Mulder who owns a house nearby to her job and lives like a recluse in a room with all the X-FILES material on the walls. Mulder agrees to work with Uncle Joe and search for the missing agent. That is the task that is before them and before us and it’s basically ignored until act three. People will argue that this is a more character driven drama and anybody who is an X-File fan will tell you that this is NOT an X-File. It’s like what Jeff Goldblum said in JURRASIC PARK: “Eventually there will be dinosaurs on my dinosaur tour?” So I’m going to say it: “Is there going to be an X-File in my X-File movie?”
This is a movie where nothing happens and the stuff that happens is confusing to both X-File fans and occasional moviegoers. First it’s actually unclear if Mulder and Scully are living together because there is a scene (don’t read on if you don’t want to be surprised) where Mulder and Scully are in bed together. No, it’s not really a romantic scene even though it’s “hinted” that just had sex, but for X-FILE’s fans that is an extremely big deal because that was the whole driving force for the show, their unspoken relationship between each other. And if is their house that they live and they just slept together they still call each other by their last names. And a major moment like that should have some pre-cursor to it; it lands in a part where it is so un-clear of what happened before. Plus the same conversation happens over and over again between Mulder and Scully:
Mulder: “I need you on this case Scully.”
SCULLY: It’s not my life anymore, I’m through chasing monsters in the dark.”
They say the same thing, no joke, about six or seven times. Yes Scully, you may be done doing your FBI job but people paying money to see you chase a monster obviously aren’t. This would be like in MEN IN BLACK 2, Tommy Lee Jones not going Will Smith and stopping that aliens, a James Bond movie where all he does is read a newspaper and mow his lawn, a STAR TREK movie where they go the mall and not in the enterprise, a SUPERMAN movie where he doesn’t fly and just stays home playing video games. A DIE HARD movie where he doesn’t blow something up he just goes to STARBUCKS for a latte.
Not to mention there was nothing supernatural about the case they were investigating because that was the whole basis for the show to begin with. Insert plot from a million other movies: It was about an abduction, gee, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS perhaps, THE CELL, fill in the blank basically any thriller in the past ten years would qualify, KISS THE GIRLS is another one; But the difference between this film and the X-FILES is the following, those movies were good. This movie was void of action; this movie was void of anything happening except a bunch of talk about how each character wants to go on with their lives. At one point I turned to my wife and asked if she put in DOCTOR QUINN MEDICINE WOMAN when I went for a bathroom break. There is a whole story where SCULLY is trying to save a kid from a disease using stem cells, nothing supernatural there.
And the ending of the movie is the two infamous characters splitting and Scully going off to be a doctor and Mulder. . . well. . . WE DON’T F@#$ING know!
See, the script would be forgivable if it was written by somebody who never saw an episode of the X-FILES but it was written by the creator Chris Carter and. A veteran writer of the show, so there is no excuse that in seven years since the show ended that this is the best they could come up with.
This movie is a disgrace and Chris Carter and crew should not only apologize for this Anti-X-FILE movie but should actually pay back and refund everybody who actually spent money on to see it. This should have been a television movie at best, a theatrical art film that just has the same characters as the hit show shouldn’t even been considered. The show needed and Alien ripping out of somebody’s chest or even a Chubacabra running around. I mean they couldn’t even put a Chubacabra in the movie.
Well we finally killed an almost franchise, we waited to long, with a great original film which had a lot of action and plot in it. A building blowing up, aliens and more aliens, a helicopter chase scene, an alien spaceship scene. And the long long awaited sequel was a talking heads movie about . . . nothing. A group of organ thieves and a couple of gay guys. Not the X-File fodder we’re all looking for.
DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE! If you are an X-File fan you will purchase a firearm and shoot your television, it’s a given!
