

Every Sunday night, we have a ritual: at 9:00 p.m.
sharp we hustle the non-believers out of the family room, shut off
the phones, kill the lights, throw the dog a bone, fire up the big
screen and tune in The X Files. So imagine our frustration when we
spent last Friday night at the local cineplex for the premiere of The
X Files Movie. We managed to get the lights killed alright, but the
rest of the experience was conspiratorial at best. There were the pop
corn-eating couples, the talking heads, and even one
cigarette-smoking man. Halfway through the movie, the doors swung
open and we were invaded by hordes of teenage, Can't Hardly Wait,
refugees who took over the first two rows of the theater.  Then the
air conditioning mysteriously shut down. As if orchestrated by some
malignant alien force, the air was being slowly sucked out of the
auditorium, beads of sweat were dripping off me, and the odor of the
unwashed theater denizens hung ominously in the thickening air. So
I'd guess you'd say it was the perfect setting to watch that epic of
paranoia, The X Files Movie, finally hit the big screen.

    The flick walks a shaky tightrope between being the "cult" movie
we X fans wanted and a general audience movie for those who spend
their Sunday nights watching Lawrence Welk reruns, or, god forbid,
actually talking to one another.  Unfortunately, the movie doesn't
quite suceed in either category.  The "regular" movie audience will
be able to follow along, but to them it'll play like a familiar song
sung in a foreign language. As for the X fans, well, like Dana
Scully, we couldn't believe our eyes, and, like Fox Mulder, we
desperately wanted to believe. But this was no Hollywood blockbuster
movie up there on the screen. Instead we got a perfectly servicible
T.V. two-parter. All the bells and whistles were present: bodies
consumed by alien earthworms, mysterious old men plotting
who-the-hell knows what, Mulder drunkenly obscessing on his dark
theories, and Scully disbelieving in spite of herself. All of us
party faithful with an intimate knowledge of the past 5 seasons have
seen it all before. But, you know, that's the whole point of the X
Files. We know it's out there! I mean of course, the dark atmosphere
of conspiracy that Chris Carter creates so well. We didn't go to the
movie to gag on special effects or Oscar-worthy acting. We just
wanted to see Mulder and Scully in those familiar, ominous plot
turns, and that's what we got.

    All things being equal, I'd have been much happier seeing it at
home, where we could at least control some of those conspirators who
tried so hard to mess around with our X Files flick.

For more great reviews check out the Movie Review Archive from Jon's
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Thanx,
Jon and Larry Zietz