X-Files: I Want To Believe

I'm only passingly familiar with the X-Files. I was never really a weekly watching fan and mostly have only seen a handful of episodes and these usually the stellar ones because they were recommended by my friend who is big in to horror and the early seasons of the show. I did see the first feature film and vaguely remember a plot with aliens, black ooze and bees. Its worse that its been some time since even my passing interest in the show has been activated. So I can't really remember the characters that well or the major plot lines and there are definitely insider moments in the film that go way over my head.

The upside? The movie has no aliens. The shows convoluted alien storyline is abandoned for other paranormal activity. And honestly what few episodes of the show I watched and enjoyed revolved around singular phenomena anyway so this is really a big plus. The story picks up sometime after Mulder and Scully left the FBI. Scully (Gillian Anderson) works as a doctor in a church run hospital. Mulder (David Duchovny) skulks around his house all day with a full beard cutting out newspaper articles. An FBI agent (Amanda Peet) taps Mulder because of his familiarity with cases that deal with paranormal activity to help her rescue a kidnapped agent with the aid of a psychic.

When you boil it down it ends up being a mediocre if slightly over long episode of the show. Not terrible by any means but not exactly stellar either. Billy Connolly shines as the psychic formal priest pedophile who has a few discussions about faith and religion with science minded Scully. More sad in their performances is that of Peet who doesn't do much and Xzibit, who does even less. Duchovny and Anderson largely seem to phone it in having moved on to other roles and seem almost to not care that much about the characters but they do occasionally have nice on screen moments that remind you of the chemistry they had on the show.

Maybe a more hardened fan would get more joy out of it than I did, I'd advise everyone else to not bother.