Film Review: The X-Files 2

The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Directed by Chris Carter
Released July 25, 2008
Seen July 27, 2008

Talk about the disappointment of the century. I watched the entire television series in preparation for this sequel no one was clamoring for. Having been intensely dissatisfied with the conclusion of the show, I was hoping this could be the second chance to get it right for the “X-Files” legacy. Sadly, this doesn’t even come close. The first tragic mistake is the title: the tagline “I want to believe” refers to a poster David Duchovny’s Agent Mulder had up on his wall in his office which shows a blurry photograph of a UFO, referring of course to a belief in extraterrestrial life. You’d think the movie would have something to do with aliens. Not in the slightest. The film is akin to a lackluster normal episode of the show. None of the show’s legacy is at all preserved. The token theme music plays only for a second at the beginning, and then when a picture of President Bush is shown, a cheesy gimmick which makes the whole show and movie seem trivial. Trailers touted that “only a case this big could bring Scully and Mulder back together”. That sets the film to be immensely unfulfilling, as the case is rather boring and nowhere near “big”. The casting of the psychic as a pedophile seems altogether weird and serves little purpose. Scully and Mulder seem to have lost much of their token chemistry. Casting rapper Xzibit as one of the FBI agents is an explicable decision, and I’d be hard-pressed to come up with as wooden an actor to fill his shoes. Amanda Peet also turns in a horribly forgettable performance, which is especially depressing given her recent great work on NBC’s failed drama “Studio 60 and the Sunset Strip”. Throw on top on that a wasted Callum Keith Rennie (one of the Cylons from “Battlestar Galactica”) with a despicable accent and the most ludicrously inane plotline in recent history and the result is a failure of a film which left me feeling absolutely disgusted.

F