The X-Files: I Want to Believe

It is a little silly, but it's also a skillful thriller, giving us just enough cutaways to a sinister laboratory to keep us fascinated.

Carter uses the big screen to great effect, although keeping some of the personnel straight during the often-frantic action is tough. But the script, by Carter and Frank Spotnitz, is funny, smart and propulsive.

If The X-Files: I Want to Believe is the last we ever see of this world and these characters, it's not a bad send off at all. Probably not satisfying for everyone, but good for what it is.

The vision that must have been in Carter's head just never explodes creatively. Although it plays out on the big screen, the story feels like a TV episode.

It's a well-constructed thriller in line with the creepy traditions of Chris Carter's long-running TV series, but it doesn't move along the show's central "the truth is out there" mythology.

Carter and co-screenwriter Fred Spotnitz have devised a compelling suspense thriller with some tense moments, and Carter has infused the film with an atmosphere of, not gloom, but sorrowful reflection.

The world is as dark and doomy as ever, and Billy Connolly, as a scurvy priest who may or may not be a visionary, steals the acting honors.

Change the title, recast the actors, rename the heroes and The X-Files: I Want to Believe would still be a decent, creepy crime drama. Whether that's enough to satisfy devotees of the television series is debatable.

The plot is more convoluted than it ought to be -- trimmed down to episode size, it might've been better -- but fans can't help but enjoy seeing the FBI heroes Fox Mulder and Dana Scully on the big screen after all this time.

Carter directs the film with an eye for the creepy and skin-crawling, but he's clearly more interested in the Mulder-Scully relationship than the X-File investigation.

Ultimately, it's just a commercial-free episode that stretches long past its normal runtime. For fans, that should be enough.

You can watch The X-Files: I Want to Believe as a sci-fi thriller or as a romantic tragedy, but it works much better as the latter.

On its own merits it's an okay thriller whose influences will be all-too clear to B-movie buffs.

While we can be thankful that J.J. Abrams hasn’t taken over the show and recast it with Miley Cyrus and Zac Efron, Anderson and Duchovny don’t inhabit their roles as completely as they once did.

Despite the size of the image before you and the budget behind the production, the new film feels decidedly small-screen, like a somewhat inflated version of an old episode of the show, but with more history.

The movie arrives like a cosmic relic from the distant 1990s, when hope wasn't quite so battered.

Those who aren't fans will be left out in the cold. Unless you desperately long to know every detail of The X-Files mythology, the movie is not compelling.

Devotees can chuckle knowingly over a few choice cameos, but the film generally succeeds in standing alone as an enjoyable 100 minutes for the unfamiliar and the die-hard.

If you are a fan of the show, this is a must-see movie, simply because it touches on enough of the grace notes the show offered weekly to take you back to the days when Mulder and Scully were shining their flashlights into the darkness.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe threatens to tarnish the show’s well-deserved positive reputation with a routine and nearly suspense-free thriller plot that never feels worthy of the big screen.

The truth is, the mystery pales next to the best X-Files plots. But fans will appreciate sly references to past episodes, an unexpected appearance from an old friend and the still-poignant bond our heroes share.

Although there are some shocking surprises in store, the script, unlike the TV series, is rather transparent. In the end, the sum seems somewhat less than its parts.

The movie, like the series, employs titles registering places, hours and minutes in old-fashioned military typescript, but here they're unintentionally funny.

In trying to split the difference between long-suffering fans and moviegoing newbies, creators Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz have alienated both.

If the studio heads thought they could revive interest in the X-Files franchise with a brain-dead movie like I Want to Believe, that was wishful thinking.

Why? Why resurrect one of the most beloved pop-culture phenomena of the Clinton era, after six years on the sidelines? The hopelessly tardy new X-Files sequel I Want To Believe never provides a compelling answer to that question.

Gillian Anderson keeps it interesting, but newest chapter no improvement on predecessors.

There's really nothing here that will attract casual viewers to the movie. And even die-hard X-Philes are in for a huge disappointment.

Fans of the late and lamented show may want to believe that this X marks a glorious return, but this plodding supernatural thriller wouldn't even make a top-10-episodes list.

As the film unfolds in its predictable fashion, it becomes increasingly clear that it’s at best the equal of some of the standalone TV episodes that weren’t directly related to the conspiracy.

Fans longing for closure of the show’s convoluted nine-year storyline will get either answers or satisfaction, but probably not both.

It's all so predictable, you keep expecting a commercial break.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe is atmospheric and moves briskly, but it's basically TV writ large.

Inconsistent action and packed with cliches, this tale won't attract new believers.

While the movie has sinister doctors, gruesome operating scenes and severed limbs, it doesn't bring the scary. The mystery is downright boring. If this case is an X-File, it must be the papers scrunched in the back of the filing cabinet.

David Duchovny is back as Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson joins him as Dana Scully. That is the best news about this movie. No screen lovers have ever gotten more sizzle out of withholding.

Some things never change, and even though the actors haven't lost their charm and sparkle, it feels like they're trapped in a rerun, minus the action.

The whole thing feels like just another episode of the show -- supersized, but hardly superior. And given the original cast and crew involved, that has to be a disappointment for any fan. They deserved better. They expected it.

X-Files creator Chris Carter seems determined to ignore the huggermugger that made the TV series distinctive in favor of a plot that's a Silence of the Lambs knockoff.

I wanted to believe that a new X-Files film would be something special. Now, all I can think is: That’s it?

Don't expect the clever, intricate twists of the series. It feels like a wan version of the show -- one that has lost its otherworldly edge.

This movie is a kind of B-movie Silence of the Lambs with the added element of illegal medical experimentation.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe is a major disappointment, though it’s not uninteresting in the way it deflates expectations.

Beyond its threadbare (at best) connection to the series, I Want to Believe is just plain poorly made.

Despite displaying the skeletal structure of the successful show, this flick just feels empty and ultimately very disappointing. You want to care, but don't.

The new X-Files movie? Not exactly "out there." The truth is they've taken the spooky, paranormal-minded TV show and drained much of the "super" right out of the supernatural.

This film is at best just a bad episode of the '90s TV phenom, painfully stretched out and so disappointing it has to rank as one of the year's great failures.

The movie is less like an episode of The X-Files and more like the trashiest installment ever of Law & Order: SVU.

Everything about the movie is drab: the music, the photography, the personalities of the bad guys, even the landscape.

Old, familiar faces aside, this X-Files sequel unfortunately doesn’t satisfy the itch for more Scully and Mulder paranormal adventures.

Low in budget, inspiration and excitement, the film feels less like a bigger, better, widescreen reworking of the old goblins-and-G-men show than a forgotten script agonizingly stretched to feature length.

The wacky spaceship X-Files crashes to Earth with a resounding thud in its second movie incarnation -- and let's hope those pesky aliens give it a proper burial this time.

In the argot of The X-Files, the Truth Is Out There. Too bad it's just the plot of a trashy horror flick.