X Files, The

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Dark, funny, paranoid, arbitrary, humming with tamped-down eroticism and in love with all things weird: That's the good news.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Like the TV show, The X-Files movie is stylish, scary, sardonically funny and at times just plain gross.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

As pure movie, The X-Files more or less works. As a story, it needs a sequel, a prequel, and Cliff Notes.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Offers two hours of solid entertainment.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

Neither true believers nor newcomers to the phenomenon will be disappointed.

San Francisco Examiner Tim Goodman

In the movie, the truth will (and does) out itself. Mulder and Scully have seen the future and it's a giant leap for each of them to comprehend.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

This is more than enough material for two hours of summer-movie fun, and The X-Files delivers said fun reasonably well. The action scenes are bigger and bolder than their small-screen counterparts.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

It's the brilliance of The X-Files to have turned Mulder's paranoid style into a function of cool. Mulder and Scully aren't just beautiful, smart, well-armed and seemingly impervious to the banalities of everyday life, such as cheap haircuts and ruinous love affairs--they're cool.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

Though both stars are sometimes eclipsed when the film strains for big action episodes, Mr. Duchovny sustains enough cool, deadpan intellect and suppressed passion to give the story a center. Ms. Armstrong has the harsher, more restrictive role, but she plays it with familiar hardboiled glamour.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

It's a smart, exciting, involving film that's true to its source, which is all it really needs to be.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Solid, workmanlike stuff, and enough to keep the legions of X-philes sated until next September. And since I realize some of you are dying to know, no, Mulder's butt remains, as always, fully clothed.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

The X-Files movie is really just a two-hour teaser for the series's sixth season. And little else. You will feel exactly like Mulder when he says, "How many times have we been right here before, Scully? So close to the truth?"

Slate David Edelstein

The X-Files isn't so much a bad movie as it is a crackerjack piece of television. It's crisply made--not sodden like many of the "Star Trek" pictures. But it's as annoyingly open-ended as the rest of the series' episodes.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

With its shrewd mixture of paranoia and the paranormal, the way its elaborate mythology combines enigmatic phenomena with potent cabals intent on running the world, The X-Files experience resembles "Twin Peaks" crossed with "The Twilight Zone."

Empire Neil Jeffries

The X-Files can stand proud as a genuine movie with a beginning, a middle and an end, two charismatic leads and a franchise ahead of it.

Film Threat Ron Wells

The problem is, the main conspiracy of the show is so vast, you have to walk around it a couple of times before you can see what it is.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

What we have here is a pretty good TV show huffed and puffed into a rather mediocre film.

The New Yorker Bruce Diones

Ultimately disappointing--it's bigger budgeted, but somehow less engrossing when played outside the solitary intimacy of the tube. It'll be a great video flick.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Falls somewhere in between standing on its own feet as a real movie worth the price of a ticket and merely being a glorified TV episode refitted for theaters.

Salon.com Joyce Millman

It's a two-hour episode of the show, except with better production values and a nicer wardrobe for Scully.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Truth is, it' not very good.

USA Today Dennis Moore

I entered the screening for The X-Files: Fight the Future with myriad questions... I left with disappointing answers. [19 June 1998, p. 7E]

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Essentially a supersize episode that ignores a slew of fifth-season developments and adds yet another monster to the mix, one that owes a striking debt to "Alien."