That terrific TV critic Joyce Millman rightly called the first chaotic X-Files movie, The X-Files: Fight the Future, "an overgrown sweeps episode." Ten years later (and six years after the series' demise), The X -Files: I Want to Believe resembles those TV-series reunions that bring the cast of a hit together for a not-so-special occasion.
The plot about a clairvoyant defrocked priest, Father Joe (Billy Connolly), who may lead the FBI to a kidnapped agent, sutures together tropes from serial-killer movies, horror classics such as The Body Snatcher and Frankenstein, medical suspense films like Coma and psychic jamborees like The Dead Zone. The script is the real monster in this movie.
What would pictures like I Want to Believe do without a cryptic evildoer in a menacing truck? The whole enterprise suffers from tired blood.
David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson still look marvelous as paranormal expert Fox Mulder and medical doctor Dana Scully, now out of the agency but dragged back for this one case. They play to the hilt their traditional roles of believer and skeptic, respectively, and occasionally display the sixth acting sense that comes from developing rapport over time.
I was a semi-happy fan whenever they were mixing things up with their tart-tender chemistry, or Mulder was employing his pinpoint sarcasm at naysayers, or Scully was unleashing her smoldering disdain for anyone she considers a con artist. That didn't happen often enough to save the movie.
Chris Carter, who directed, co-wrote and co-produced (and was the executive producer of the TV series), tries to force resonance into I Want to Believe. Scully, who still wears a cross around her neck, has gone to work at a Catholic hospital, Our Lady of Sorrows. She wants to use a controversial stem-cell treatment to cure a boy with an otherwise terminal brain disease. Should she persist despite her bosses' disapproval? At her most desperate, she looks to Father Joe for a clue, and he is a pedophile who victimized 37 altar boys.
Carter deftly injected improbable comedy into grim scenarios during the series; he treats Scully way too soberly in this movie. (Mulder suggests that Scully has never stopped mourning the loss of William, the baby she gave birth to in the show's next-to-last season.) Scully grounded the TV show. She was the voice of reason with some kind of faith mixed in, especially faith in Mulder. Despite Anderson's best efforts, Scully weighs down I Want to Believe. In this movie, she is our lady of sorrows.
