Friday, July 25, 2008
A&E The X-Files: What would Jose Chung do?
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 9:20 PM
If you have fond memories of "The X-Files," I strongly recommend that you avoid going to the cinema to see the show's second big-screen spinoff, The X-Files: I Want to Believe (reviewed here). Rather than see a witty, spooky, once-proud sci-fi franchise besmirched on the big screen, you'd do better to simply dig up some of your favorite episodes.
Possibly the show's most entertaining, self-mocking installment in its history was "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." The late Charles Nelson Reilly plays a Truman Capote-esque writer investigating one of Mulder and Scully's alien abduction cases, only to discover that every witness offers a different version of events. This short clip makes fun of the show's fans as well as its stars' acting styles, and Duchovny offers the most memorable line-reading of his career:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/4Rl_X4Fy_FI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
I stuck with "The X-Files" as long as anyone reasonably could, giving up somewhere in the eighth or ninth seasons after the departure of both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as Mulder and Scully. I caught Mulder and Scully's return for the series two-hour finale, which was probably as close as creator Chris Carter could get to explain the show's by-then insanely convoluted "mythology" of government conspiracies and rival alien invaders. One can appreciate that Carter offers a simple, self-contained storyline in I Want to Believe, but it turns out to be a dreary little film with none of the fun of the show at its height. It resembles a cheapie direct-to-DVD knockoff released to theaters in some kind of sleight-of-hand trick.
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