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X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
20th Century Fox


6.3

based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 120 votes
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FILM:

The X Files

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for violent and disturbing content and thematic material

Starring David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Xzibit, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Callum Keith Rennie, and Adam Godley

The supernatural thriller is a stand-alone story in the tradition of some of the show's most acclaimed and beloved episodes, and takes the always-complicated relationship between Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in unexpected directions. Mulder continues his unshakable quest for the truth, and Scully, the passionate, ferociously intelligent physician, remains inextricably tied to Mulder's pursuits. (20th Century Fox)

GENRE(S):	Mystery \| Sci-fi
WRITTEN BY:	Chris Carter Frank Spotnitz
DIRECTED BY:	Chris Carter
RELEASE DATE:	Theatrical: July 25, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA \| Canada

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie works like thrillers used to work, before they were required to contain villains the size of buildings.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Knowing nothing about "X-Files" is no impediment to appreciating this for the well-acted, adult piece of work that it is.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Billy Connolly, as a scurvy priest who may or may not be a visionary, steals the acting honors.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Duchovny gives a nicely shaped performance here -- he still has the ability to suggest the boyish eagerness beneath Fox's blasé demeanor. But the movie really belongs to Anderson.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The Carter and Spotnitz's credit, such weighty concerns aren't the stuff of most mainstream genre movies. But they're also not sufficiently gripping to transform a middling thriller into something truly provocative or haunting.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

I Want to Believe provides a welcome reminder of what made Carter's franchise a pop-culture gem.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

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.

Film Threat Rory L. Aronsky

Please Chris Carter, bring us X-Files fans back to where we belong. If there is to be another movie, and there damn well better be, return us to our beloved mythology.

Empire Kim Newman

An okay paranormal mystery, with solid work from the regulars – but please Mr Carter, next time, could we have liver-eating mutants or post-modern comedy like the really good episodes of The X Files?

Time Richard Corliss

For the uninitiated, The X Files: I Want to Believe may seem as musty and forbidding as one of those dank secrets that Mulder and Scully were forever digging up from some backyard, or fetid swamp, or their own aching hearts.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Travis Nichols

Does nothing so much as stir up a pining for the show in its prime -- a darkly imaginative and wonderfully weird thing -- though it is always nice to see old friends, however mellowed by age they turn out to be.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Older and sadder, Mulder and Scully are no longer sure they've got the energy to even ask if the truth is still out there. And it feels as if Carter is skeptical, too.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The problem is that only a fan would be inclined to tolerate this dunderheaded mystery.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Worst of all, not once does Mulder answer his cell phone to hear those immortal lines: "It's Scully. There's been another death."

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

In not knowing who it needs to please, I Want to Believe pleases no one.

USA Today Claudia Puig

It feels like a wan version of the show -- one that has lost its otherworldly edge.

Slate Dana Stevens

The problem with the movie's semisupernatural crime plot, though, isn't that the resolution is completely outlandish; it's that the outlandishness is insufficiently grounded in pseudoscience.

Variety Brian Lowry

The warming glow of nostalgia only goes so far, with one's level of forgiveness likely dictated by where they reside along the "X-Files" fan continuum.

Washington Post Hank Stuever

A taut, well-acted, not very scary, not very hard to figure out serial-killer mystery.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The story is both a muddle and a drag.

The Hollywood Reporter Justin Lowe

Overall, the film plays like an improbably skewed but comparatively routine criminal procedural that would have served the original show well as an extended season opener or sweeps-week contender.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Anderson, who's turned Brit in a number of TV series and films, including "Bleak House" and "The Last King of Scotland," is compelling in her white lab coat and surgical scrubs, and she brings some real tenderness to her tete-a-tetes with Mulder.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

An exercise in mediocrity. It's curious how little of the TV series' charm and appeal can be found in this uneven, plodding excuse for a reunion.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The story is shockingly ordinary. The movie plays like an extended mediocre episode of the X-Files TV show or, for that matter, even a contemporary crime series such as CSI.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Atmospheric and moves briskly, but it's basically TV writ large.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The whole enterprise suffers from tired blood.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Carter and his underachieving cohorts have seldom given cultists less to believe.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Baggy, draggy, oddly timed and strangely off the mark, The X-Files: I Want to Believe is the generally bad-news follow-up to the show’s first feature-film incarnation, "The X-Files."

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The truth is, indeed, still out there. And when Carter finds it, may he heed its wisdom: Let go.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

We waited 10 years for a sequel to the movie version of "The X-Files" – and the best Chris Carter could do is The X-Files: I Want to Believe?

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

The truth is still out there, like an unsold lawn chair at a garage sale, in this just plain lousy second big-screen outing for erstwhile FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.

Los Angeles Times Jan Stuart

Even at its stride, "The X-Files" was a load of malarkey. But it was thoughtful malarkey and compulsively watchable. One could say the same about the first two-thirds of The X-Files: I Want to Believe before it spins out of control and into a delirious plane of awfulness.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

They've become deadly dull, these two once-keen buckers of bureaucratic BS, and watching them interact on screen is akin to having your pleasure centers removed by knobby little aliens whose only knowledge of mankind comes from Jack Webb's stoically unvarying television incarnations.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.3 (out of 10) based on 120 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Fabio C. gave it an8:
A good movie for X-Files fans... you won't find aliens and conspiracies in it but C.Carter decided to explore and focus on the other great theme of the X-Files TV series, that is the Mulder/Scully relationship. A more complicated and intricated plot would probably have diverted attention from what Chris [Carter] and Frank [Spotnitz] thought had to be the heart of this movie. It's a good old school thriller, surely not as bad as someone is describing it.

Bambi gave it a5:
If Mulder and Scully had been replaced with two different characters, I Want to Believe could easily have been transformed into a run-of-the-mill thriller. . .which would only have interested me enough to catch on video. Likewise, leaving the Mulder and Scully characters intact but cutting some of the flab from IWTB’s running time would have resulted in an absorbing X Files television episode. Which obviously would only have merited viewing on television. While there’s nothing terribly wrong with this workman-like big screen adaptation of the X-Files, it did nothing to thrill me. I must have been more bored than I felt because I was driven to distraction by 1) the glue holding David Duchovny’s beard on; 2) the uncanny resemblance Scully’s patient bore to Rumer Willis and 3) where HAD I seen that actor who plays one of the villains (Memento, as it turns out). I also thought the movie suffered from Shyalamanism in that the writers strove a bit too hard and reached a bit too far to push a theme of divine synchronicity. This added an overall hokeyness to the movie that overrode the ambiguous flavor of the X Files in its heyday. As a merely casual watcher of the show I may be incorrect in saying that it appears that the writers apparently decided to fast forward past the thrilling moment when the sexual tension between Scully and Mulder finally broke. If so, that’s like filming a Gilligan’s Island movie that shows everyone back at home but skips the part when they escaped the island. In any event, considering how many Duchovny-as-Mulder fueled fantasies I enjoyed back in the day, I was pretty flabbergasted by how thoroughly unmoved the Big Kiss scene of I Want to Believe left me. Maybe Duchovny spent all his libido on his extra-curricular sex addiction? There are so many amazingly elaborate and plausible conspiracy theories available on the internet that I wondered why Chris Carter aimed so low with his storyline. He could’ve literally hit the ball out of the park with a movie that threw these nineties characters into today’s real-life hodgepodge of post-911, pre-2012 high weirdness.

Vanessa F. gave it a10:
Awesome movie. I'm gonna watch it again .. and one more thing .. wai for what comes after the credit,DON'T LEAVE THE CINEMA!

Mike L. gave it a3:
Did not like it! It was cool seeing Mulder & Scully back together again, but the story??? They couldn't pick a better premise then that? Well, at least we will always have the show...

Derrick S. gave it a4:
The story is so disappointing to X-Files fans. It played out like an ordinary episode of an X-Files. If this was an ordinary episode of the X-Files it wouldn't even be in the top 20.

Matt H gave it an8:
Better than the reviews indicate or the returns at the box office. This is a grown up movie at the core ... not a comic book movie. Maybe this is why it didn't meet peoples' expectations.

Ed RM gave it a10:
Very nice movie, but it feels a bit too much as a stretched episode of the series.Maybe be a bit too slow for the popcorn eaters that hungers for non-stop action.

X-Files: I Want to Believe, The 20th Century Fox

X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
20th Century Fox