Believe it: New 'X-Files' film betrays its TV legacy

I want to believe, really I do, but I just can't, not this time.

"Sex and the City" might have succeeded in returning and giving its most loyal fans everything they wanted in a feature film, but I believe "The X-Files" aficionados will be sadly disappointed with its new movie incarnation, subtitled "I Want to Believe."

While it's great to see David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson back in character as Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (I'll try not to go into their relationship, the better to preserve what little mystery there is to this production), and Billy Connolly gives the series one of its traditional unsympathetic antiheroes in a prescient pedofile priest named Father John, otherwise there isn't much to recommend in "I Want to Believe."

The storytelling, in the script by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, has a laggardly feel, with the pace all off, befitting people used to working in an hourlong format and suddenly handed almost twice that. Carter's direction seems rote, and although there's a persistent theme of "darkness" running through it all, there's none of the bright-flashlight symbolism so persistent on the TV show.

The script manufactures romantic obstacles for Mulder and Scully, with Scully saying lines like, "I'm done chasing monsters in the dark" and "I can't look into the darkness with you any longer," but their conflicts seem contrived. Amanda Peet enlists as FBI agent Dakota Whitney, but hints of a budding relationship between her and Mulder get dropped down an elevator shaft.

When Mulder shaves his scruffy Bobby Fischer beard and suddenly seems his old intrepid self, it's the closest thing to a transformation any character goes through in this tale.

The actual story seems like one of the lesser episodes in the show's run, padded out to over an hour and a half. An FBI agent goes missing, and when Father John seems somehow clued in to the case Mulder is re-enlisted - with references to whatever "charges" were against him being dropped as an enticement - to cut through the psychic babble and determine if there's anything real there beyond the tears of blood in the snow. When another woman goes missing, the plot thickens - or more accurately curdles.

"The X-Files" excelled on TV by playing with and controverting many typical conventions of the police procedural. But "I Want to Believe" traffics in all of them. Let's see, shoddy police work allows a suspect to slip through the FBI, leading to a pursuit on foot involving Mulder and Whitney. Soon after, there's a car chase involving Mulder and the suspect, but Mulder doesn't phone for backup when he has the chance and instead falls victim to the public-service admonition: Don't dial and drive. Scully is even dealing with a dying child in her new job as pediatric surgeon.

Believe it or not, when Mulder is all done in and ready to be executed, the movie even resorts to the old honing-the-ax delaying device. X-philes believed their show was better than that, but when it comes to "I Want to Believe" they're wrong - and wronged.

The low-rent locations give the production a suitably seedy feel, but in the end I believe they were just cheap.

Hey, you know what? I have a conspiracy theory. It suggests that when a movie is screened for critics late on a Wednesday for an opening that weekend, it can't possibly be any good. And I believe "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" only proves my point.

"X-Files: I Want to Believe"

Rating: 1½ stars

Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly

Directed by: Chris Carter

Other: A 20th Century Fox release. Rated PG-13 for violence. 104 minutes.