The Tory Anarchist

I wonder if next time Chris Carter could shoehorn a few more fashionable causes into his generic (and thrill-less) thriller script masquerading as an “X-Files” movie. The new one, “X Files: I Want My Money Back,” only touches on gay marriage, stem cells, and pedophile priests. And a bit of Russophobia, too, though nothing linked to Putin.

This is a film that will appeal to no one, as its dismal box office is proving. You don’t need a graduate degree in “X-Files” lore to get the plot, but if you didn’t watch a decade’s worth of the television show, you’ll spent your 104 minutes staring at the screen wondering why you should care about any of these talky, self-important characters — who seem to have very little character and a whole lot of back story. If, like me, you have seen most or all the of television show, you’ll wonder what makes this a sequel to the “X-Files” rather than, say, a poor knock-off of “Seven” circa 1996. There is not an ounce of suspense in the film, never once anything to quicken the pulse or raise a fear for any of the protagonists. Nor, unlike the classic TV series, is there ever any interest in whatever it is the villains are up to. None of the themes that made the series intelligent are present. (No, all the crosses and nuns and child-hating priests don’t count: the series usually handled agent Dana Scully’s Catholicism with a bit of sympathy and tact. What’s on offer in the theaters is a parody.)

A common complaint about the show was that it carried on too long, past the point of diminishing returns. I don’t really agree with that — the later seasons might not have been as good as, say, the second, but they were still better than almost anything else on the air (then or now), and the final episode, which effectively parodied the War on Terror while still remaining true to the series, was superb. To follow it up with this cinematic atrocity is a crime.

Is there nothing to be said for “X-Files: I Want To Believe”? Well, it has Billy Connolly in it, and I found myself wishing Agent Fox Mulder would ditch Dana Scully and investigate the spacemen and monsters with Amanda Peet’s Agent Dakota Whitney instead. Come of think of it, if Carter wanted to do something really daring and transgressive, he’d dump Mulder and Scully both and start a new series with Peet and Connolly. At least then even if the results were dire, it wouldn’t tarnish the memory of the “X-Files.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 26th, 2008 at 7:54 pm and is filed under Film, Pop culture. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.