Friday, July 25, 2008

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE: I was never a big X-Files fan, but I enjoyed the movie enough that I took in the sequel tonight. Remarkably, in a world of Internet spoilers, very little about the plot has leaked, other than that it's a stand-alone story (with no aliens, black oil, or the like) and that questions about Scully and Mulder are answered. Both are accurate. The movie opens with a woman being attacked for unknown reasons, followed by a creepy old man (Billy Connolly) leading a pack of FBI agents through a snow-covered field. The old man franticly begins digging and uncovers a severed human arm.

Thereafter, two FBI agents come to a hospital, looking for "Dr. Scully," who, apparently, has become a Dr. Addison Montgomery clone over the past few years, helping sick kids with highly experimental surgery--an FBI agent is missing, and their sole lead is a man claiming to have psychic visions who led them to a human arm--they'd like her help finding Fox Mulder. Cue spooky electronica. From there, the plot spirals madly, hitting the Catholic Church, stem cell research, what happened to Mulder and Scully over the past several years, several quite gory off-screen deaths, medical experimentation (both licit and illicit), and an appearance by one character that provoked mild applause. It's all well and good until an ending (particularly an epilogue during the credits) that paints an overly sunny face on the whole thing. Overall, it's slight, but entertaining--it would be a darn fine TV movie, but on the big screen? Not so much. Response in my theatre ranged from "That was awful!" to "Well, except for the last 5 minutes, that would have been a pretty good episode of the show!" View at your own risk.

No comments:

Post a Comment