Dorkgasm Gonzo Is God

Day Late and A Dollar
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

            I remember, as I’m sure many of you do, the power and glory of The X-Files in its hey-day. Scully was hot, Mulder was cool, and you could cut the sexual tension with an alien anal probe. The stories were all weirder than anything on TV short of Jerry Springer’s talk show, and we couldn’t wait for the next bizarre piece of evidence to slip through their fingers. Now, the only thing slipping is the franchise, and there’s probably a reason it took so long to convince anyone to make The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

            To say that the film fell short of my expectations is an understatement. What might have been the glorious return of sci-fi icons was little more than a gory Cialis commercial. An FBI agent goes missing and a psychic is brought in to help. Inexplicably, the feds seem to need Fox Mulder to come in and verify the veracity of Father Joe (Billy Connolly, Boondock Saints). Don’t they have even one weird kid left over there? Guess not. Turns out that the good Father is a convicted pedo, giving Scully reason enough to harp on him because it wouldn’t be Scully if she weren’t struggling with her faith. Except that it would, and coupled with her fight to use stem cell therapy to treat her patient in a church hospital, it just feels like overwrought bitching about the Holy See, even to an atheist like me. Of course, once Scully and Mulder start checking out the psychic, everyone begins to doubt the seer, including the agent who brought him in the first place, Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet).

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            To be fair, Agent Mosley (hip-hop star Xzibit) thinks it’s all a load of horse shit from the beginning, and he seems unimpressed by any of the posturing, proselytizing, or prophesying anyone does. After the case starts to break open, the film becomes more about the dynamic duo dealing with their failed relationship and their own personal problems with each other’s beliefs. Wait, their failed relationship wouldn’t maybe have something to do with the fact that they still call each other by each other’s last names, would it? I mean, maybe I’m the odd duck here, but once you’re intimate with a person, don’t you start using their first name once in a while? The chemistry these two actors once had really isn’t there anymore. It is impotence at its worst, and the simple name faux pas only makes it less believable that what they want to believe in is each other. Instead, we end up with two people going through the motions, chasing missing women, and briefly fighting a Russian Dr. Frankenstein.

            Yeah, you heard me… Frankenstein. Not the attention grabbing kind of weird story-hook you expected? Me neither. I had hopes that this movie would be able to scare me or make me giggle. The first X-Files film was so convoluted, and the last two seasons of the series so painful, I thought maybe creator/director Chris Carter could capture some of that former brilliance once again. Instead, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. The X-Files: I Want to Believe is little more than a bad attempt to squeeze the last bit of money out of a franchise that deserves better treatment.

Final Verdict (Out of Five:)