A convoluted, unconvincing mishmash of hot-button social issues - stem cell research, Catholic church sexual-abuse scandals, pedophilia, gay marriage, organ harvesting - The X-Files: I Want to Believe reunites Mulder with Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), his pretty, pragmatic partner of all nine TV seasons. It's been six years since the series signed off, 10 since the first film.
While Mulder seems to be doing nothing now but clipping articles out of newspapers, Scully has gone to work at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital - she's a surgeon, full of angst and self-doubt over how to treat a young boy with a rare and seemingly fatal brain disease.
Enter Father Joe (Billy Connolly), a defrocked priest with claims of psychic abilities. Two hard-nosed, skeptical FBI-ers - Dakota Whitney (a no-nonsense Amanda Peet) and Mosley Drummy (Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner) - aren't sure what to make of this long-haired, noxious gent, but they enlist Father Joe's services anyway when a fellow agent goes missing. And when he leads the search party onto a snowy field, drops to his knees and comes up with a severed arm - well, it's time to get Mulder over here to check out this Father Joe and see if he's for real.
Gloomy and serpentine, with a pointless chase sequence and a couple of big revelations about what Mulder and Scully have been up to on a personal level, The X-Files: I Want to Believe will make believers of no one who's not already a diehard X-phile. Duchovny, who's moved on to offbeat indie work (playing a randy cad in Showtime's Californication), looks alternately peeved and vexed, and shrouded in melancholy, for most of the film.
