So Much for Little Green Men

By ROB DEWALT

Rob DeWalt I The New Mexican

The X-Files: I Want to Believe, psychic thriller with severed appendages, rated PG-13, Regal Stadium 14, 424-6296,

1.5 chiles

It’s been a decade since FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) first hit the big screen and six years since The X-Files television series went off the air. Somewhere on the way to last week’s wide release of The X-Files: I Want to Believe, series creator/co-screenwriter/debut film director Chris Carter decided that, if the truth is indeed out there, diehard fans of (and relative newcomers to) his paranormal/paranoid oeuvre just can’t handle it. Instead, he treats audiences to an average contemporary thriller with a few nods to the original show.

Dear X-Files fanboys and fangirls: if you buy a ticket hoping that all of your questions will be answered, prepare to be disappointed. If you simply want to revisit the dark moods and personalities so expertly crafted in the heyday of the series, your money is definitely better spent here than in the dwindling box- office lines for Space Chimps. You will, however, encounter more extraterrestrials in the latter.

Carter and company spin a relatively grisly tale involving Russian organ harvesters and a missing FBI agent, and although it takes nearly 60 minutes to discover how the two are even remotely related, there’s just enough tension to keep audiences interested. Unfortunately, your attention will be dragged from one story line to the next with such frequency and abruptness that you might wish for a carnage-riddled explosion to cut the swollen plot and cast down to a manageable size.

I Want to Believe finds Mulder and Scully finally living outside the FBI bubble. Scully — still redheaded, intelligent, and pugnacious — spends her days at a Catholic children’s hospital trying to save a young patient. The ever-brooding Mulder spends most of his time clipping paranormal tidbits from the newspaper and tacking them to the wall next to a picture of his presumably dead, alien-abducted sister.

The disappearance of an agent and the unsettling psychic visions of a pedophile priest force the FBI to approach Scully at the hospital and request the location of her former partner. The feds need his help, and the clock is ticking. A disillusioned Mulder initially dismisses the FBI’s invitation to punch his paranormal dance card as a trap, but with a little prodding from Scully, he relents.

Mulder soon finds himself in the middle of a Saw sequel. Drugged, surrounded by body parts, and searching for the dismembered damsel in distress, the hero is suddenly the victim of his own morbid curiosity: Mulder wants so badly to believe, he seems willing to die in his quest for the truth. It’s a shame, then, that the big revelation in I Want to Believe is so disappointingly mundane.

The one constant in the film —

besides a hefty dose of dark foreboding

accompanied by Mark Snow’s creepy music — is Father Joe (Billy Connolly), a fallen man of the cloth whose premonitions lead the former agents on a number of dead-end chases through the snow- covered West Virginia countryside. The ex-padre’s otherworldly radar tunes into Scully’s skepticism about his “gift.” As far as she is concerned, it is nothing but an elaborate act to deflect attention from the fact that he has molested 37 boys. She doesn’t want to believe in this foul fellow. But if she wants to save the missing FBI agent, Scully must follow the priest’s lead. She’s stuck between

a frock and a hard place.

Meanwhile, back (and forth, and back again) at the children’s hospital, Scully is trying to persuade the hospital board to let her try a drastic new procedure that might save her dying patient. A crisis of faith, religious controversy, and a portrait of George W. Bush bleed the stem-cell-research angle for all it’s worth, but the way the plot gets there feels a bit contrived. Scully, a doctor who – - on the TV show — seemed to know about every medical breakthrough, is reduced here to using Google for guidance on the procedure.

And pardon the pun, but the organ-harvesting portion of the plot goes way out on a limb in terms of believability. Who knew Dr. Frankenstein was a Russian mobster? Who knew West Virginia was the new borscht belt of macabre criminal activity? And who would have guessed that the leader of the bad guys is actually … well, it must be seen to not be believed.

Bland performances by perma-scowling rapper Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner (host of MTV’s Pimp My Ride) and a severely detached Amanda Peet dilute the time-tested chemistry between Duchovny and Anderson. But the two maintain some spark and, along with Connolly, bring some praiseworthy acting to the table. The X-Files:

I Want to Believe isn’t a bad film, but what it offers theatergoers could have been accomplished just as easily as a lower- budget television one-off. Considering the cost of a movie ticket, that would have been just fine.

Carter eschews his exploration of extraterrestrial mythology, abduction, and government conspiracy in favor of broader themes dealing with faith, medicine, morality, and the allure of unsolved mysteries, but he risks alienating his fan base in doing so. And the risk isn’t worth the reward. <

(c) 2008 The Santa Fe New Mexican. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.