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+--- Thread: X-Files: I Want To Believe (/thread-2975.html)
X-Files: I Want To Believe - Mike Hanson - 07-28-2008
Well, no big surprise, I checked out the new X-Files Movie
This past Friday Afternoon (Hi. My name is Mike Hanson and
I am an X-Files addict.).
What can I say...this is certainly the closest that Chris Carter
has come to "aping" The Silence of The Lambs since the TV
show first aired over a decade ago.
"I Want To Believe" follows the same basic structure of the Jodi
Foster/Anthony Hopkins breakout film with haunting familiarity,
the only problem being that Lambs was a brilliant script that worked
as both a daring chess game thriller and a wonderful celluloid
palette that introduced us to new and complex characters.
Here, we "already" know as much about the two leads as we
do about ourselves (9 seasons and one motion picture anyone?).
What new depth to their souls can be plumbed? The answer. None.
Just the same old tired ground of Scully's sense of faith and Mulder's
sense of duty.
The 30 million dollar budget (something I did not read about until
"after" I saw the film) is quite evident not only in uninspired set
pieces and endless snowy woodscape, but in the rather boring
peripheral cast, which consists of a lot of B-Level actors giving
paper thin performances. Come on, Amanda Peet and Billy Connolly?!
The plotline of this would-be edgy thriller comes off more as checker
game than chess match. The basic premise is that an FBI agent has been
kidnapped/taken by a presumed serial killer and so the clock is ticking.
Aided by a ridiculously flawed former-Priest psychic (Connolly), Mulder and
Scully, now reduced to unemployed citizen and mercy hospital doctor,
are unofficial "consultants" to two FBI Special Agents (doe-eyed Peet
and mustache-challenged rapper Xzibit).
And then there is the Scully "B"-story, an angst-filled and tedious
soap opera distraction which drains nine-tenths of the looming dread
right out of this drama.
The x-file-ish punchline in the end comes right from a discovery channel
expose on weird medical experiments I watched just one year ago.
It'll raise your eyebrow and then be quickly laughed off.
As a one-off, all by itself, this flick just does not carry the load.
And as for all the talk of "stand alone episode" and "TV series continuity
nonexistent"...yes, it is all true. As much as I had originally felt
the series mythology was the wrong way to go with the first movie,
the now overwhelming revelations of the last few TV series
season 9 episodes make a stand alone movie like this, ultimately,
pointless.
I give this dragging popcorn flick TWO out of five cans of diet cherry
vanilla Dr. Pepper.
Mike out
X-Files: I Want To Believe - Kenji - 11-08-2008
Today I went to see "X-Files: I Want To Believe", and I enjoyed it. Feels like I met old friends, "Oh! Fox Mulder and Dana Scully! Where have you been?"
X-Files: I Want To Believe - cobalt - 11-08-2008
"Mulder" has been busy making us laugh on Californication, on HBO.