Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
7/25/08
Television
and the movies are two entirely different beasts. Perhaps it's because
movie characters are fifty foot faces being projected over your head in
a public venue while their TV counterparts are smaller-than-life presences
we invite into our homes on a daily basis. We tend to visit the characters
in a movie franchise only for the most Earth-shattering events in
their lives, while we can spend every day (even every hour, in the case
of 24's Jack Bauer) with our TV pals. As such, while we may
love and even empathize with the characters in a movie, we BOND with the
people we see on our favorite TV shows. When they're gone (yes, Virginia,
every TV show is eventually canceled), we still wonder what they're up
to. And, perversely, more and more of them are popping up in the
movies to let us know. It's been 6 years since the disappointingly
overstuffed two-parter “The Truth” brought a close to 9 seasons of The
X-Files, which reigned for a good chunk of the 90's as my favorite
show. The last two seasons were a mess, and both cast and fans alike
needed a bit of a time out. But for a few years now, my mind has
begun to wander back to where iconic FBI truth-seekers Fox Mulder and Dana
Scully have gotten to. At last, the answer comes in The X-Files:
I Want to Believe. The film tells a forgettable paranormal story
that's no better than any middling 4th or 5th season episode, but it's
in reconnecting with those characters and what has become of them that
the movie soars. Turns out, a few well-chosen words about what Mulder
and Scully say about the world in which we live go a lot farther than any
attempt to explain that whole alien conspiracy thing.
While
searching for a missing Agent, FBI Agents Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet)
and Mosely Drummy (Alvin “Xzibit” Joyner) are approached by Father Joseph
Crissman (Billy Connelly), a disgraced pedophile who claims psychic visions
about the abduction. He leads them through a field of snow to find
a single severed male arm. With time running out, Whitney recommends
reaching out to fugitive Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), who was the Bureau's
leading expert on all things paranormal while he ran The X-Files division.
They “know” where he is, hiding out with his former partner, Dana Scully
(Gillian Anderson), who has moved on to become a Doctor. While she
struggles with a particularly difficult case in which only she believes
in radical and painful treatment to try and save the life of a sick child
(Marco Niccoli), she's approached with an offer to carry to Mulder:
full immunity if he helps with the investigation. And so he emerges
from his hermit-like existence, dragging a reluctant Scully along to a
meeting with Father Joe, who challenges her skeptical worldview with three
simple words.
What
is most interesting about I Want to Believe is that it does not
do what every movie like it does: Scully never actively rejoins the
investigation, Mulder is never reinstated. The word “X-Files” is
not even uttered on-screen. Yes, as revealed in the series finale,
an alien invasion looms in the year 2012 (it's never mentioned here), but
it does make a certain kind of sense that while powerlessly awaiting that
date, Mulder would disappear into a room full of newspaper clippings while
Scully would run as hard and as far from it as she could, pursuing her
passion for medicine. These don't seem to have been happy years in
the Mulder/Scully household, but their chemistry as a couple is impressively
lived-in and goes far beyond anything we ever saw in the too-coy final
seasons of the series. This isn't a story about going backwards.
Yes, Mulder needs to reconnect with his unique ability to save lives by
relentlessly pursuing answers, but what's most impressive about he and
Scully's final scene together is the lesson that determination offers for
her crisis at the hospital and for us all in these troubled times.
If you'd tell fans going in that as many of Anderson's scenes involve the
hospital plot as the paranormal one, they'd be pretty horrified, but it
actually works very well. The movie is always at its' best when it's
about who Mulder and Scully are, both individually and as a couple, and
how they can move forward from the ashes of his quest for The Truth.
As
I mentioned earlier, 'Ship aside, this wouldn't be a particularly memorable
episode, but it's not a “bad” one (and, make no mistake, The X-Files
was as capable of churning out a turkey on any given week as any great
show I can think of). The way the investigation starts with the “normal”
paranormal (psychic leading the Feds in search of women abducted by a strange
guy in a truck) and ends up in some seriously abnormal paranormal (which
I'll leave you to discover yourself) is very interesting. I thought
I had a sense of where we were headed early on, but I had it all wrong.
The final revelations are quite perverse, and some will find them a bit,
um, intolerant (I prowled my thesaurus for a spoiler-free way to say that).
But I don't think they fall outside the range of bizarre and disturbing
behavior in which all kinds of people on the show engaged over the years.
And the more diversity we see in the movies, the more freedom we should
allow for those diverse characters to occasionally be downright bonkers.
As mentioned previously, there are no aliens in play: file this X-File
under “Perversions of Science”.
Duchovny
and Anderson step beautifully back into their iconic roles: she in
particular is as good as she's ever been. But they also build wonderfully
upon the foundation of their earlier work to give us a Mulder and Scully
who've been somewhere doing something for all the time they and their fans
have been apart. Connelly is a very effective guest star, both creepy
and sincere. His scenes with Anderson crackle with combative energy.
Palace favorite Peet is fine, but this isn't the kind of role in which
she shines. Joyner does what he can as a really hostile Scully.
An old favorite (yeah, if you've got ears, the TV ads give it away) turns
up late in the game for a few really good scenes. Series creator
Chris Carter's feature directorial debut is consistent with his work on
the series over the years, although he should have reigned in his goofier
instincts when it came to a really thudding President Bush joke and some
indelicate name-dropping of the show's many behind-the-scenes contributors
I'm
not sure how much The X-Files: I Want to Believe offers for
non-fans of the classic series. It's an OK sci-fi procedural, and
you'd have to be crazy not to see how awesome its' stars are in these roles.
And it does supply a real, full-bodied emotional journey for them, not
always easy for people who've already racked up over 200 hours on-screen.
But for the converted, the movie represents a long-awaited chance to spend
100 new minutes with one of the greatest TV franchises of all time, and
they could very well be the last. If that's the case, we leave our
pals, former Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, on a far better
note than last time.
And,
for the love of God, stay for the end credits. |
