The X-Files: I Want to Believe

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)
Directed by Chris Carter
Written by Chris Carter, Frank Spontitz
Starring David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, xZibit

Synopsis
agents mulder and scully are back ten or so years later to help the FBI in a case that they stupidly couldn't figure out for themselves, even though they had a friggin' child molester psychic to tell them all the answers. mulder obsesses. scully separates herself with her darned questioning and unbelieving. mulder gets in trouble. scully saves the day.


MOster
There are spoilers in here.

Remember when hearing those first six notes in the "X-Files" theme sent shivers down your spine?  Well now it just sends my eyes back into my head.  Aside from coming along something like six years after the end of the show (which I admit to having stopped watching even before T1000 left), this movie amounts to nothing more than a mediocre overlong episode of the show.  And the only reason it's "overlong" is because we have to deal with them getting back into the swing of investigation and we have to listen to them arguing about the fact that they even are in the swing of investigation.  At the end of the day, this was nothing more than a crime drama.

Something else that really annoyed me about this movie was how it handled the non-platonic relationship between Scully and Mulder.  Not the characters themselves, because that part actually rang true--even though calling each other by their last names (presumably even while they're screwing since they do so while naked in bed) is a little on the sketchy side for me.  xZibit goes to find Scully at the hospital and asks her to go to Mulder for her and we get this whole scene of her driving out to his place and opening a gate and sneaking around.  But then it's not until something like a half-hour later that we learn they're actually living together.  That was stupid.

The plot itself is really just a regular crime drama.  It's couched in an investigation of a missing FBI agent which is being helped by a psychic (Billy Connolly, not playing this nearly as over-the-top as I would have liked to see).  I guess the psychic aspect is the X file, and it's fine that by the end they've at least shed some doubt on his psychic ability.  But the whole thing with moving this dude's head from one body to another because he has cancer (and why do they have to keep doing it?  Is the process imperfect? Does the cancer come with him?) is really what the case is about.  That's why the women go missing.  So, yeah.  I could see that part being a late-period episode of the show... with them looking into the rearview mirror every so often, saying "I want to believe" (did I mention that each of them does, more than once, repeat the subtitle of the movie?  Another mark of excellent screenwriting right there.), and just confirming that the shark was still back there somewhere.

Oh, yeah, there's one go-nowhere subplot with a patient of Scully.

As for the actors, they're mostly fine.  Anderson and Duchovny are back in their original elements, and they do fine.  Connolly was too subtle for my tastes, and Peet and xZibit did OK as well.  The technical stuff was OK, again playing out mostly as a big episode of the show; but there were a few wonky little things in the photography and the editing which make me think there wasn't quite enough quality control for this thing.

I've said a lot here (because that's what I do), but I don't really have much to say.  I recommend this to jaded completists only.  Everybody else can go watch Law & Order.

The Woman
 i actually didn't think this was as terrible as people said it was. i thought it would be unwatchable. maybe because i just finished watching the series a couple of months ago,(i stopped watching the original airings around the time of robert patrick) and was used to watching the deep canyon of suck the series had slid into. i can tell you for certain the movie was way better than the entire last season. it just wasn't really an "x-file" it was a reach that the FBI needed mulder back from exile/hiding just to deal with a psychic. especially since the psychic was right all of the time, and only a minor character. there was also a weird lack of details about the post FBI lives of our once loved agents. half way through the movie we find out with a throw away sentence that they are, in fact, living with one another. even though they were shown in a house together, the way it was shown made it seem like they were at mulder's house and then at scully's house. it's just a stupid little detail, revealed in a stupid way, that didn't really have to be the big a-ha moment that they tried to make it. who cares? it's not like mulder and scully were shown interacting in a domestic way. i did like how their relationship was way past the 'i love you' cuddly, cutesy stage all relationships go through. they were more at the old married couple, be in the same room, but living separate lives stage, which also happens in every relationship. i appreciate that. it's never all roses and chocolates, even when you take 7 or 8 seasons of tension to finally get together.

i think people got too excited for this movie when it came out. the first movie wasn't that great either, and that was when the writing team were actively writing for the show. 6 years of no practice with the characters, or the character of the show.....well it just came out like a late season, two hour, long drawn out, episode.

moster obviously slept through the part where they explain that the transplanted body only last a couple of weeks.....do your research buddy, before you publish your complaints!