'The X-Files: I Want To Believe' (PG-13)(out of four)

I wanted to believe my wait to see Mulder and Scully on the big screen would be worth it. I'd sit back and relive the glory days of the believer and the skeptic, the raging paranoia, the convoluted plots -- and the idea that the truth really was out there somewhere beyond the boundaries of Earth.

But the truth is, the new "X-Files" movie, "I Want to Believe," is a monstrous disappointment.

The big-screen version is little more than an episode of "CSI: Vancouver." (Dang, it's cold in this movie, by the way. Although the setting is West Virginia, the movie was shot in and around Vancouver.)

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are drawn back into the world of the "X-Files" after a female FBI agent turns up missing. Without revealing too much of the plot, I can tell you that there's a psychic pedophile priest (Billy Connolly), a child with a terminal illness, black market organ transplants, a Russian underground, animal tranquilizer guns, and, did I already mention lots of snow?

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An FBI agent (blandly played by Amanda Peet) believes that Mulder may be her last hope of finding the missing woman. She enlists the help of Scully, now a doctor in a Catholic hospital (Our Lady of Sorrows), to smoke out Mulder, who has been hiding out from the FBI, and see if he can help her cause.

While Scully wants no more of "chasing things in the darkness," it's in Mulder's blood. Something inside of him makes him go back. He must figure out if the pedophile psychic priest's visions are an unexplained phenomena and why body parts are showing up buried in ice. Come on, Mulder, wouldn't you really rather be chasing aliens?

Besides, we've seen this psychic game before. In an episode from Season 1 a psychic convicted murderer had Scully believing she could communicate with her dead father.

Wasn't there any way to expand upon the half man-half parasite who threatened New Jersey in Season 2? Or the Texas vampire story from Season 6? (By the way, I know all of this because I got snowed into thinking I needed the primer DVD that conveniently came out just before the feature film. Show creator and director Chris Carter reportedly hand-picked eight episodes for "The X-Files Revelations" two-disc DVD that related in some way to the movie. If only he had stayed true to that mission.)

And what about the trailer making us all believe that the psychic priest was connecting to something otherworldly after blood spurts from his eyes while he's on his knees in a field of snow? Fat chance. Short of shocking for a brief second, that plotline goes nowhere, just like other Swiss cheese holes in the story.

The truth is out there. Somewhere there's a good script that somehow got swapped and a bad script put in its place. Maybe it will show up just before Christmas in the year 2012 on the alien spaceship that will be making its arrival on Earth. (If this reference makes no sense to you, skip the movie and pick up the final episode of "The X-Files" on DVD.) Truth be told, there were more aliens in the latest "Indiana Jones" than this schlocky b-movie thriller.

There is some unexplained phenomena, however, in Carter's movie. An out-of-place reference to President George W. Bush shows up when Mulder and Scully show up at the FBI headquarters.

It elicits laughs, but makes absolutely no sense in the context of the film. Homophobia rages in one reference involving the belief that all altar boys molested by a priest will turn out to be gay. One agent is convinced that one of Father Joe's victims is most likely behind a black market organ transplant plot and it has something to do with another man and same-sex marriage. The unnecessary reference takes the plot nowhere.

Carter wants us to believe that he and his followers can go home again. We could relive the intriguing world of "The X-Files" and that the tension between Mulder and Scully would be exciting to us once again. The scary truth is that a fuzzy UFO poster, familiar theme music, and a cozy bedroom spooning scene between the two lead characters isn't able to bring back the small-screen magic.

Like Scully, I remain a skeptic that the final episode in 2002 was the end of the "X-Files" era. For all you Mulders out there that want to believe, be my guest. But in the end even true believers will come to the realization that X marks this spot in name only.