Like The Simpsons Movie, one can't help leaving The X-Files: I Want to Believe feeling like they just paid good money to watch something they should have watched on television free (say, a drawn out two-parter in the middle of Season One when the chemistry between the lead duo wasn't quite certain).

Now off the air for six years, the show's premise was deceptively simple: an FBI agent, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), was consigned to the Siberia of the intelligence community, investigating marginalized, unsolved cases deemed X-Files. Fellow agent, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) was tasked with applying her scientific background to keep her partner in check, as he was prone to make leaps of faith by assessing paranormal involvement to many of their cases.

Keep in mind: their dynamic was part of their appeal.

The X-Files were basically made up of two kinds of shows: the mytharc episodes and the monster-of-the-week episodes. With The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Chris Carter has wisely chosen to ditch the storylines related to the underlying mythology of the series. To wit, that aliens live among us and are part of a colonizing effort. During the course of their make-it-up-as-they-go-along mytharc storylines, the mythology had become strained to the point where disbelief couldn't be sustained.

Wisely, the writers have eschewed the mythology in favor of the other kind of episode (it's easier to think of this movie as another episode). The monster-of-the-week episodes are what drew in the casual fans of the show, the ones who didn't as slavishly follow the mythology as closely as the other X-Philes. So there's no complaining about the idea behind the premise of the movie. The movie itself, on the other hand, leaves a bit to be desired.

With Scully and Mulder there is little fun and less spark or sense of the cool monster-beaters of old. Instead, there is too much of the last two seasons' brand of serious crap lingering. Maybe the creators were setting up a return to their familiar dynamic, where we have two people who love each other dearly but can't work out as a couple, their respective single-minded drives being the main obstacle in why they wouldn't work as a couple. Regardless, it comes across as an uncomfortable peeking-in on the happily-ever-after of old friends you've come to know... only to see them not work out.

Then there's the plot itself.

Brought in by X-Files: The Next Generation members, Xzibit and Amanda Peet (Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip), whose partnership loosely mirrors Scully and Mulder's, the team investigates the case of a missing FBI agent. Aided by a psychic ex-priest, Father Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly doing a poor Clyde Bruckman impersonation), convicted of "buggering 37 altar boys," they discover that there is a very human evil purveying in organ harvesting. In other words, there is little paranormal, hardly any X to speak of, about this case, which plays out more like a bad episode of Criminal Minds.

Keeping the television structure, the B-story arc is even less compelling. Scully, in her new life as a doctor, has bonded with a patient, a Christian (no, seriously, the character's name is oh-so-subtly named Christian Fearon, played by Marco Niccoli) in need of stem cell treatment in order to prevent his untimely demise.

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