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 Ultimate Movie Review Page
Thanx, Jon and Larry Zietz
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