2008 Film Reviews #2: X-Files - I Want to Believe

X-Files - I Want to Believe (Chris Carter, 2008)

Apparently the team behind this film have argued that its lack of critical success was down to people finding it too 'dark'. I'd contend that it was probably more to do with the fact that it was complete bollocks; a messy, unsculpted, tensionless romp through the tropological entrails of the TV series (read: photogenic snowscapes, backwoods laboratories, David Duchovny's once-fresh gallows humour). This is all elevated to a new plateau of unintentional hilariousness by Billy Connolly's camp turn as a soothsaying pederast. I Want to Believe's denouement was the recuperation of Mitch Pileggi's Assistant Director Walter Skinner, a moderately interesting character at some point in the mid-to-late 1990s, from his descent into an extremely vague region of bad guy-dom that took place around the turn of the Millenium. As if this wasn't 'made for TV' enough already, there's an annoying subplot about Scully, who reminds me of one of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Enlightenment wenches, going through the theological wrangle. As I say, nice photography, but the Canadian landscape lends itself to that kind of thing anyway. Two out of ten.