rachel500 | Review - X-Files Movie II (Reply)

Review: The X-Files Movie

The X-Files used to be required viewing for me especially at Uni where a group of us would gather together on a weekly basis to watch, drink wine and comment about the weird storylines. It was in its time a pivotal TV show, changing the television landscape with intelligent, well-acted and produced stories of the strange yet compellingly fascinating. Given the success of the first movie which relied heavily on the mythology of the show's background story, it was with some eagerness that I sat down last Friday night to watch a DVD of the second movie which is more stand alone in nature with old friends. None of us had seen it; we were excited, hopeful and buzzed from three bottles of wine.

Frankly, we needed more alcohol.

I'm not sure who thought the movie was a good idea. Well, OK, maybe the idea of another X-Files movie wasn't a bad one - great TV series, loyal fan following, it was bound to make money. I'm sure the idea of reuniting Mulder and Scully who'd spent the last few seasons of the show separated due to reasons which were never clear to me, beyond Duchovny's absence, and which have been lost in the fog of time since was a good one; Duchovny and Anderson had an incredible chemistry on-screen.

I will concede that actually they still do. They have a great rhythm and bounce off each other well when they're in scenes together. The relationship between the agents is for the most part well-played - there is a sense that they are in a relationship, that they love each other despite their flaws and neuroses and miss their son (who was placed with adoptive parents because he might have had weird alien powers and was in danger). This dynamic is believable and one of the high points of the movie.

Another was the brief appearance by Mitch Pileggi resurrecting the character of Walter Skinner. As Skinner comes to aid Scully in her quest to find Mulder and they rescue him and a kidnapped woman from being decapitated, it has some semblance of feeling like the old X-Files. A third highpoint for me was the scene where Mulder chases the bad guy into the construction site, and the lead female Agent takes a dive from the building - great direction, nicely paced, well-lit - just an all round good moment.

The movie really needed more of them; three highpoints in a film that stretches for over an hour and forty minutes is not really enough. The rest of it was Dull - and yes, I do mean with a capital D. The main failing is with the story - now who thought that was a good idea? The storyline of the paedophile (played with robotic stiffness by Billy Connelly) who might have had a true pyschic connection to his past victim who in turn was part of some bizarre serial killings in order for his head to get a new body is confused and dreary. As the plotline for an hour's X-Files show it may have been fine - as the plotline of a movie...its just not exciting enough to grab the attention of the audience and maintain it for so long.

Worse by far though is the equally dreary subplot of Scully's crisis of conscience regarding both her relationship with Mulder and the treatment of a young boy in the Catholic hospital where she now works as a doctor. When the paedophile (an ex-Catholic priest) tells her 'Don't give up' she convinces herself that he means to put the child through painful treatment to save his life. This whole fight for the boy was astoundingly nothing to do with the actual main plotline except to bring into question Scully's belief or non-belief in the paedophile's psychic ability (it's probably no surprise she considers him a fake until the don't give up nonsense), and presumably to give her an additional excuse for ducking Mulder's request that she join him on the FBI taskforce.

The angst that is developed around their relationship seems to come out of nowhere and has no believability. Scully, who begins the movie by all but shoving Mulder into the arms of the FBI investigation, suddenly turns around and tells him she can't deal with him choosing to go back to the darkness and she's leaving him. Huh?? If she was that bothered about it, why, why, why would she bother getting him involved in the first place? Wouldn't she have just lied or just not told him? It's a plothole that is wide enough for the iceberg that hit the Titantic to drift through.

To add insult to injury, the irritating subplot angst also results in the two leads spending much of their time apart on screen which left me scratching my head. Isn't the fact that the two of them are on screen again a plus point in getting bums on seats?? Isn't the audience waiting with bated breath to see the two of them share screen space?? And given that actually their dynamic was and is the best thing about the show, why separate them so much? If it was to contrive the whole Scully to Mulder's rescue bit, well, I can think of twenty different scenarios that would have ended with Scully racing to save Mulder and all of them requiring the two leads to be together until such a moment.

I also wasn't sold on Scully being so entrenched in her disbelief. Certainly as a character by the end of the TV run, she was more open to the suggestion of the unexplained. But then its hard to see where they could have gone given their explicit reveal of the pyschic's crimes of paedophilia upfront. However, I think it may have been more interesting for them to have played with that Mulder-as-believer and Scully-as-sceptic dynamic by at least initially turning it on its head. But they don't so we get effectively early X-Files replayed complete with past dialogue only with Scully frowning at the idea of being involved by mid-way through the movie.

'It's about your sister'; 'If you can't believe in him, at least trust me'; and other cliches. Some of the dialogue is simply horrible and I wonder that Anderson and Duchovny actually managed to say it without cringing. Personally, I was cringing on their behalf. Overall, I think this film was a missed opportunity. They could have done something spectacular and what we got was something mundane. The story relied on the grotesque and the real horror of abuse rather than anything imaginative; it took a pedantic and obvious route and in doing so it dragged the film too much into the realm of TV afternoon movie of the week territory.

Unfortunately, I think it says something when the end titles roll and the overwhelming feeling is of relief and the urge to drink a fourth bottle of wine in the hopes it obliterates the memory of watching said film.