X-Files film is a mediocre TV episode

X-philes, the devoted fan cult of the sci-fi TV series, may feel more left out than compensated with "The X-Files: I Want to Believe," which arrives in theaters this weekend after a security blackout that rivaled any hush-hush attempted by the CIA. This plot has been carefully guarded.

Rumors were that it would concern werewolves. Or that Martians would be involved, and the child of Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) would somehow surface.

All these are false. What's true is what the producers insisted all along: that the new movie would stand independent of the TV series. It does that and does it quite well.

Change the title and the name of the characters, and it would still stand as a quite involving and creepy crime melodrama. More tense than actually suspenseful, it is paced nicely, but one doubts that TV fans are going to jump for joy.

The problem is obvious: no aliens.

"I Want to Believe" is very much of this world, with just some mad scientist Russians (Dr. Frankenstein types) as the villains. We suspect that Russians will never replace Martians in the fears of the fans. The ploy must have helped trim the special-effects bill. After all, haven't we had enough unusual sights with the likes of Batman and Iron Man and Will Ferrell in the other theaters?

The real mystery is the fact that this movie exists at all. The first film, "The X Files" (1998), didn't do that well at the box office. And the series, which started in 1993, ended six years ago. There must be hope that "X Files" can walk in the astronomical footprints of "Star Trek." That film franchise didn't catch on until the second film, when Ricardo Montalban brought forth "The Wrath of Khan" in 1982.

The film begins six years after the TV series ended. The X Files have been closed. Fox Mulder, investigator of aliens and other things that go bump on TV screens, has become a hermit after he was excommunicated from the FBI. We know he's a hermit because he has a beard. Scully is a doctor, still bucking up against the world. When she isn't doubting aliens, she's doubting the medical profession. You'd think that after all these years she might take a tranquilizer.

When a female FBI agent goes missing, a grizzled psychic, played by Scottish comic Billy Connolly, sees a vision, or something, that leads him to believe the woman is still alive. He leads the agents to places where she has just left. He's an excommunicated priest who lives among similar outcasts in Richmond.

Following his visions, he leads the agents from Richmond to West Virginia. We don't see anything that looks like Richmond - no Confederate monuments on Monument Avenue - so we conclude it was filmed on some soundstage, in Canada.

There are a lot of dark hints of real-life issues - stem-cell research, pedophilia, sex-abusing priests, gay marriage and such. There is a subplot about a young boy who is dying.

David Duchovny, one of the few actors who actually has an Ivy League degree, still looks smart, and red-headed Ms. Anderson still is cynical and doubtful about him, the psychic and just about everything else. Her specialty is to look at all times as if she smells something bad.

They look older, and even though their nine-year television flirtation has already been consummated (we think), they still have doubts and talk about how they really aren't compatible. (Even Scarlet and Rhett never had this much trouble getting it on.)

FBI superior Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) is back, but Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish are not. The wonderful Amanda Peet is an addition, complete with gumption and fine timing. Why don't they give her better roles?

Although this is a nice little crime-hunt drama, it is just a big-screen TV episode, and not one of the better episodes at that. In the movie summer of 2008, normal human beings are just so old hat.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com