Minute44 - Dan Schonhaar

Directed by: Chris Carter
Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Billy Connolly, Amanda Peet, Xzibit

***WARNING - POSSIBLE SPOILERS***

It’s been about 7 years since we last saw the two most famous FBI agents in the world and despite the series winding down in popularity (and credibility) towards the end, they left us wanting more. Well, now, all these years later we get more. Mulder and Scully, now no longer employees of the FBI are enlisted by the bureau once again, this time to help find a missing agent with the help of a convicted paedophile priest (Connolly) who also claims to be a psychic.

So, what have the agents been up to for the last 7 years? They were left on the run weren’t they? Mulder had been found guilty of Murder hadn’t he? Alien powers had all but taken control of the FBI right? Well let me tell you right from the start, if you want answers to these questions (Let’s face it, all us X-Fans do) then you’ll be sorely disappointed. They not only avoid the answers to these questions, they completely disregard major plot points in order to get the characters back in play. I’ve not seen such a vulgar display of shark-jumpery in my life. An example of this is when the FBI offer Mulder a deal; Help us find our missing agent and we’ll drop all charges and give you a clean slate. Well, given the events of the final episode fo the series, this is just plain impossible.

Ok, ok, this might be a tad geeky… what about the story at hand? I mean all the shark jumping and unanswered questions can be ignored if the story itself is a good one. Just like in the days of the series’ hay day when all talk of the overall conspiracy could be suspended for an hour while the agents were hot on the tail of the latest Monster-of-the-week. Well this movie, unfortunately falls very short of the mark in this department as well. For a movie based on a TV series based entirely on paranormal phenomenon, not much paranormal shit goes down. Sure there’s a psychic but a really boring one. There’s also some wierd science type experimentation involving dogs and humans and stem cells but we hardly see any of that and the point of it all is hardly explained at all. The plot, then is, in a word, weak. Characters are not developed and the choice Chris Carter made to have one of the main plot devices be Scully’s ongoing battle with her faith and the evidence just seems odd. Amanda Peet, wasn’t so bad as Agent Whitney but Xzibit just pissed me off as Agent Drummy (yeah… I know.). Even Billy Connolly, who I was expecting to brighten up proceedings, even though his character is truly dark, just didn’t. He was very dull indeed, an unfortunate motif for the entire movie.

The Agents though, was it good to see Mulder and Scully back on the screen again? Well, sadly, no. As FBI agents these characters were deeply interesting and could seriously kick ass. Now, they’re just rather boring. Mulder has lost his intensity and even his usual quick wit, mustered nothing more than a slight grin from most of the audience. Scully seems to have regressed deep into her scepticism for some unknown reason which makes her dull and kind of frustrating. After all, one of the main points of the series finale was that Scully had been ultimately convinced of the truth and had become a full blown believer in all things paranormal. The one character that hadn’t lost any of his original chemistry was Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) but the fact that he was even in the movie was a total farce! - See paragraph 2.

All in all then, I was completely disappointed on all counts. This is even more of a shame seeing as Carter had two possible avenues for success and he didn’t take either of them. He could have answered the fans’ questions… but he didn’t. He could have made a really dark, yet blackly comic monster-of-the-week type film, like the old days… but he didn’t. What we have instead is a forced, poorly acted and boring re-incarnation of two classic characters that just leaves you asking “why?”

Verdict: