X-Files: I want To Believe

A line of FBI agents are seen crossing a snow covered field, while a black helicopter flies overhead. The group moves steadily, while pounding the ground with poles, trying to determine what lies beneath the surface. A man with scraggly, white, shoulder length hair runs out in front, with his arms flailing by his sides. He finally drops down to his knees and starts digging in the snow. The line of FBI agents run up to see what he has found.

The above scene could have been from any modern crime drama / thriller movie. Instead, this was from the new X-Files movie, "I Want To Believe". Like the title implies, I wanted to believe this would be an excellent movie. I wanted to believe that it would be as good as their first movie. I wanted to believe that we would have a movie that could continue where the series had left off.

Having been watching the reruns on scifi and TNT, I have been excited for this movie to come out. Instead, I found myself constantly needing reminding that this was in fact an X-Files movie. It really did not even seem like a prolonged episode. I think there were plenty of episodes that were, in fact, better than Chris Carter's latest installment in his long forgotten franchise.

Perhaps that is where the problem lies: it has been too long. Maybe Carter forgot what he was doing when the series ended. Well, let's recap. At the end of the Series, Mulder and Scully were fugitives from the FBI. Mulder was wanted for the killing of a military officer. He had a military trial and was convicted, sentenced to death. It turned out that the military officer was a Super Soldier - a human/alien hybrid incapable of being killed by ordinary means. They found out that they could be killed by some kind of metal that was in the hills in the Arizona desert. Last I knew, there were still more of these hybrids, and there was still an alien conspiracy to colonize or destroy the planet.

Well, this movie does not touch on any of that, except for that Mulder has been hiding for the last x years. The FBI suddenly needs his help because they are dealing with a psychic who says he can lead them to one of their missing agents, and they are willing to throw away the charges against him. Believable? Mulder is not so sure, but inevitably gives in - maybe because of the prolonged isolation, or maybe because he wanted to show off his beard to the FBI.

Well, I do not want to give away the entire plot, so let's start summarizing. X-Files: I Want To Believe has its good points. There are times that you will laugh - such as a point where they zoom in on a particular picture of some famous person and bring out their famous theme whistle. There are also intense moments, where you wonder if Chris Carter does not care about these characters anymore and Mulder will actually die during this movie? David Duchovney and Gillian Anderson do their best to remember what these characters were like and bring them back to life on the large screen.

In the end, this movie fails at ringing true to the series. Yes, it has Mulder and Scully. True, Mark Snow continued with the score we know from the series, and brought a familiarity to this movie. And then there was the "freak-of-the-week" villain, though I thought this seemed more like a take on "Silence of the Lambs" than an X-File. What this movie needed was something more that tied it to the series.

If you want to see this movie, see it before some of the other major movies. And might as well see a matinee, while you're at it. I want to believe that we can save some money at the movies. (Sorry, just had to throw one more movie title pun in there)