Y?

It was a combination of upgrading to a new computer and the loss of my internet connection that caused me to be off for almost a week. I've seen many bloggers and web site authors over the years who seemed completely dumbfounded by the idea that people may stop visiting their sites just because they either rarely or never get updated. Since I would definitely become one of those and because I never want to have to post something like, "Why did you stop reading me, you ungrateful bastards? Sure, there was nothing new but the archives were still up. What, you're all too good to re-read the classics?" I figured I better get something up, even if it sucks. On that note, here's a new review. Oh, it doesn't suck, but I would have posted it even if it had.

The X Files: I Want to Believe is one of those movies where people who once worked together on something successful and said, "Sure, I'll accept a huge check to do this crap again." I was an X-Files fan for a while. There were times when it was as good as anything that's ever been on television, like when they had Alex Trebbek and Jesse Ventura playing Men In Black. Then you'd have something about some sort of giant man-worm hybrid living in the sewers that made you think someone must have broken into the producers' offices, left the script on the desk and it got made by accident. If this movie were an episode of the show, I would rate it as average. We can't really hold creator/writer/director Chris Carter responsible for any of this. After all, he only had 6 years since the show went off the air to work on this.

It opens as most X-Files episodes did, in some atmospherically lit environment where vaguely menacing figures are clomping around terrorizing some innocent individual. Word of warning: if you are ever out in the woods and you suddenly stumble on an area beautifully lit by 500 watt lights, RUN! Intercut with this are scenes where some sort of search team is following around a crazy looking Scot (Billy Connolly who chose to have the same hairstyle as my grandmother) named Father Joe. The character of Father Joe is a convicted pedophile and I can't remember how he ever managed to convince all these law enforcement types to follow him onto a frozen lake and change their whole search pattern on his whims. It turns out he's having psychic visions and he digs up a severed arm. This convinces Special Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) to call in the FBI's most famous specialist on crazy Scottish psychic pedophile ex-priests, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny).

It turns out that Mulder has been living a quiet existence since the end of the show with his former partner turned lover, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). You can see why they get along so well since she lives a relatively normal life working as a doctor for a Catholic hospital while he lives a Unabomber lifestyle in a fortified compound still studying stories of alien anal probes. After vowing not to get involved with the FBI again, he promptly gets involved with the FBI again in a search for an agent who was kidnapped by those vaguely menacing figures you saw at the start of the movie. Father Joe keeps having visions about her that are the next best thing to useless. He says things like, "She's alive, dogs are barking, people are speaking Russian," and none of this does jack to aid the investigation because, like all psychics in movies and, for that matter, in all forms of fiction, he gives what's basically the first number of a 2000 number combination. Everything they say is true but it doesn't help to end the investigation. If it did, if Father Joe had said, "The woman you're looking form is at 1024 Main Street, Apt 4. Bring some chicken fingers, they're her favorite," then the movie would be over in two minutes but this tactic of doling out tiny bits of vague information in a piecemeal fashion is very noticeable and very annoying.

There are attempts at character development as Scully has to decide whether to use a risky experimental treatment on a terminally ill child but that whole subplot is distracting even though Scully's research into the illness will later provide her with a vital clue to the case she and Mulder are investigating.

There does come a point where they track down the villain and I suppose you all think that the movie just ends there BUT NOOOOOO it does not. Why is that, you ask? The villain uses the brilliant tactic of having stupid and incompetent people looking for him. He literally walks down his hall, sees a dozen FBI agents with all their backs turned to him and walks back out. He is then fortunate enough to have the kind of luck that can only be granted to you by god-like screenwriters and is able to evade Mulder and is even able to attack Agent Whitney. But don't worry, it gets dumber from there.

I'm going to try and explain this to you without spoiling the ending too much. It turns out that the reason the FBI agent was kidnapped and several other murders were committed was partly due to an act of love and also involved an amazing piece of science fiction. The medical procedure that the villains are attempting is, quite simply, one of the most amazing events in the history of medical science. If this were actually possible, they wouldn't need to do it through illegal means but instead would have conducted their experiments at the most prestigious medical institutions on the planet. Still, had they done that, we would have been spared all the scenes of severed limbs, disembodied heads and buckets of blood so...um...yay?

Hopefully they won't let Chris Carter make another one of these since I'll probably feel obligated to see it. Yes, it's my choice whether I see it or not but I'd rather blame Chris Carter. I stopped watching The X-Files when it became obvious that Carter was lying to us when he said that he knew where the series was going and how it was going to end. Instead you got the feeling that they were just making it up as they were going along and this movie has the same feeling since they forget the psychic pedophile after a while to concentrate on the Russian body thieves.

Oh well, hopefully it won't be a week before you see me again. If it is, please enjoy the archives. They're classic.

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