I just saw X-Files: I Want to Believe. There are too many other people beginning their reviews with "I Wanted to Believe It Would Have Been a Decent Film", for me to do the same.
However, that is how I, like many others, felt tonight. There was laughter during the serious scenes, and no laughter during the briefly "comic" moments. Not a good sign when the audience is tittering during moments of anger or tears between the main actors.
After it was over, I wanted to buy Chris Carter a beer, sit down with him, slap him in the head and say "Chris..... what happened?" Chris wrote some great episodes, but as the series ended it got weaker and weaker. This movie plays like a subpar episode from one of their weaker seasons. It's as if Carter had proved the old cliché that a writer only has so many stories in them, and when they're gone, they're gone. I don't want to believe that, but it's hard to dispute it in this case.
Duchovny and Anderson are first-rate, as always; they are the only reason people would watch this movie; no-one else could say these lines and hold interest.
Watch this movie only if you want to see them as their characters, and discard any need for coherency or plot, let alone logic; because you won't find it.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS (NOT THAT IT MATTERS):
The main villain in this movie is a 50 year-old Russian delivery man, who outruns the younger Mulder, outwits him, is played as if he's the unstoppable Alien throughout the series, when he is really only a.... 50 year-old Russian guy with no special powers. Then, at the very end, after getting away after every gruesome crime, he gets whacked in the noggin with a wrench from a woman and goes down. End of villain. The movie ends shortly thereafter.
The "hero" of the movie is a retired pedophile priest. Making this schmoe a "pedophile" just to make him unpalatable, was unnecessary, and insensitive to those who have actually been molested as children. It was a very cheap and easy way to make the guy disturbing to audiences, and Carter is smarter than to use such a cheap device.
SPOILER ALERT: (again, not that it matters): The entire plot, as ludicrous as it sounds, boils down to this:
A 50 year-old gay Russian dude who is part of an illegal organ-snatching ring wants to save his gay partner by stealing body parts; when that fails, he plans to have his head grafted onto a woman's body. That's it. I kid you not. When you see the movie, you will see this is exactly the plot. You will also want to join me in slapping Chris Carter in the head. After all this time, this is the best he can come up with? It is a cross between a Russian Dr. Frankenstein movie and Hairspray.
MOST LUDICROUS MOMENT AWARD: Again, the shame here is on Carter, not Duchovny. He actually has Mulder go into a room full of the people he knows have been abducting and cutting up women for body parts, armed with.... a wrench. That's right, a wrench. He staggers around (he has a head injury) saying "Stop! Just Stop what you're doing! Do any of you speak English??" Then a 70 year old Russian doc hits him with a hypo gun, knocking him out. This is the guy who went toe to toe with unstoppable morphing aliens in the series. Now he's dumb enough to get hypo'd by a guy on social security. Everything after this point was pure farce, and you feel insulted that you were expected to take any of it seriously.
The plot holes are too giant to describe. Save that for a guy that used to live on the cell phone, it doesn't occur to Mulder to use his phone when he finds out where the bad guys are. Oh yeah, he does, but his car gets rammed so he drops it. Then, when he wakes up hours later in his car, he still has his phone, but doesn't use it.
But wait, Skinner arrives anyway! And he has some of the dumbest lines in the movie as he and Skully try to find Mulder randomly in the dark! OK, I give up..... there's no describing it.
The Truth Is Out There, and it is this: Any member of the audience tonight that was laughing during this movie could have sat down, and in two weeks, written a treatment that would have turned into a better movie than what Chris Carter and Spotnitz wrote. If you are a fan, you will leave the theater with the same feeling; and you will be correct.
Yep, this...thing with two heads was written by two heads. Which is probably why you will see two-headed things in this movie.
As for myself, I Don't Want to Believe. I Don't Want to Believe that Carter would write something this bad, and this insulting to not only the die-hard X-Files fans, but for Duchovny and Anderson to perform.
I can't end without saying something directly to Carter, though I know he won't ever read it: Come on, Chris. You know you could have written a better and more compelling (and more coherent) script than this. You should have vetted it, found out how bad it was, scrapped it, and started from scratch with a new script with higher stakes and more meaning for your audience. Your audience deserved better, and your legacy deserves better.
(Cue mournful X-Files music at end......)
However, that is how I, like many others, felt tonight. There was laughter during the serious scenes, and no laughter during the briefly "comic" moments. Not a good sign when the audience is tittering during moments of anger or tears between the main actors.
After it was over, I wanted to buy Chris Carter a beer, sit down with him, slap him in the head and say "Chris..... what happened?" Chris wrote some great episodes, but as the series ended it got weaker and weaker. This movie plays like a subpar episode from one of their weaker seasons. It's as if Carter had proved the old cliché that a writer only has so many stories in them, and when they're gone, they're gone. I don't want to believe that, but it's hard to dispute it in this case.
Duchovny and Anderson are first-rate, as always; they are the only reason people would watch this movie; no-one else could say these lines and hold interest.
Watch this movie only if you want to see them as their characters, and discard any need for coherency or plot, let alone logic; because you won't find it.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS (NOT THAT IT MATTERS):
The main villain in this movie is a 50 year-old Russian delivery man, who outruns the younger Mulder, outwits him, is played as if he's the unstoppable Alien throughout the series, when he is really only a.... 50 year-old Russian guy with no special powers. Then, at the very end, after getting away after every gruesome crime, he gets whacked in the noggin with a wrench from a woman and goes down. End of villain. The movie ends shortly thereafter.
The "hero" of the movie is a retired pedophile priest. Making this schmoe a "pedophile" just to make him unpalatable, was unnecessary, and insensitive to those who have actually been molested as children. It was a very cheap and easy way to make the guy disturbing to audiences, and Carter is smarter than to use such a cheap device.
SPOILER ALERT: (again, not that it matters): The entire plot, as ludicrous as it sounds, boils down to this:
A 50 year-old gay Russian dude who is part of an illegal organ-snatching ring wants to save his gay partner by stealing body parts; when that fails, he plans to have his head grafted onto a woman's body. That's it. I kid you not. When you see the movie, you will see this is exactly the plot. You will also want to join me in slapping Chris Carter in the head. After all this time, this is the best he can come up with? It is a cross between a Russian Dr. Frankenstein movie and Hairspray.
MOST LUDICROUS MOMENT AWARD: Again, the shame here is on Carter, not Duchovny. He actually has Mulder go into a room full of the people he knows have been abducting and cutting up women for body parts, armed with.... a wrench. That's right, a wrench. He staggers around (he has a head injury) saying "Stop! Just Stop what you're doing! Do any of you speak English??" Then a 70 year old Russian doc hits him with a hypo gun, knocking him out. This is the guy who went toe to toe with unstoppable morphing aliens in the series. Now he's dumb enough to get hypo'd by a guy on social security. Everything after this point was pure farce, and you feel insulted that you were expected to take any of it seriously.
The plot holes are too giant to describe. Save that for a guy that used to live on the cell phone, it doesn't occur to Mulder to use his phone when he finds out where the bad guys are. Oh yeah, he does, but his car gets rammed so he drops it. Then, when he wakes up hours later in his car, he still has his phone, but doesn't use it.
But wait, Skinner arrives anyway! And he has some of the dumbest lines in the movie as he and Skully try to find Mulder randomly in the dark! OK, I give up..... there's no describing it.
The Truth Is Out There, and it is this: Any member of the audience tonight that was laughing during this movie could have sat down, and in two weeks, written a treatment that would have turned into a better movie than what Chris Carter and Spotnitz wrote. If you are a fan, you will leave the theater with the same feeling; and you will be correct.
Yep, this...thing with two heads was written by two heads. Which is probably why you will see two-headed things in this movie.
As for myself, I Don't Want to Believe. I Don't Want to Believe that Carter would write something this bad, and this insulting to not only the die-hard X-Files fans, but for Duchovny and Anderson to perform.
I can't end without saying something directly to Carter, though I know he won't ever read it: Come on, Chris. You know you could have written a better and more compelling (and more coherent) script than this. You should have vetted it, found out how bad it was, scrapped it, and started from scratch with a new script with higher stakes and more meaning for your audience. Your audience deserved better, and your legacy deserves better.
(Cue mournful X-Files music at end......)