Saturday night at the movies
I don’t watch a lot of movies in the theater. The ones I see really have to be worthwhile, or in some cases, worth my loyalty, but are probably not going to be good. (2009 new Star Trek movie, I am talking to you! And Clone Wars, I am not talking to you. Forget about getting more of my money, George Lucas. You and I are through!)
I came late to the X-Files, and started watching the series late at night in reruns when I only had five channels. Soon, I was borrowing a friend’s DVDs and slurping eagerly through most of the series. (Season 8, Season 9, we won’t talk about you.) But I started watching after the show had been off the air a year or two. I didn’t get to watch the first movie in the theater, either.
So the new X-Files movie was a big deal to me. I sneakily started trying to find out what people were saying about it, because I normally don’t care.
The early word was that nobody liked it. The local reviewer didn’t like it. Fans might be the only people to like it, but isn’t that the point?
And of course I wanted to see X-Files: I Want to Believe at the midnight showing. But I was too tired and decided I’d go on Friday during the day. Still too tired. So we settled on Saturday.
So it’s Saturday night, and we’re going to the movies. It has been a long time since I’ve been at the theater on a Saturday night, and I’d forgotten about the huge crowd of people. The people with no taste.
The crowd of people waiting in line moved slowly. I hoped, naively, that they weren’t all there for my movie. I loudly started ripping on the terrible travesty of a movie called Step Brothers, saying that it already had gotten better reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Let me tell you the one thing I believe in: Will Farrell has never been in a good movie, nor in a movie that I would willingly watch. Somewhat funny guy, terrible movies. Sorry. What I CANNOT believe is that a turd of a movie like that is actually better than a well-shot, well-written, plot and character driven movie such as X-Files.
All of you reviewers out there: suck it. Thanks. All of the people out there wasting money on a stupid comedy and saying how great it is? Suck it!
Getting back to my point … After I ripped roundly on Will Farrell and the kinds of zombie people who would watch his movies, we got close to the ticket window. The couple in front of us quietly asked for two tickets to Step Brothers. And I didn’t care. They looked like they were going to see that movie, too. Good. At least they weren’t watching X-Files with me and just not getting it.
$21 later and we were in the theater. Tickets torn, get a very expensive pop to share, and on to our seats.
Something’s not quite right. In the corridor to the theater, there’s a guy on a cell phone who stops us and asks us to see our ticket stubs, not wearing a theater uniform. We hand him the stubs and he looks like he’s not going to return them.
“Can we have our tickets back?”
“No, I’m going to keep them,” he said.
“No, you’re not,” and we take our tickets back from him. Then his friend pops up and explains.
“Look, I’ll be honest. We’re trying to sneak our friends into the theater. We need your tickets.”
“No.”
“Come on, I’m being honest now. Be real, come on.”
“What if we need our stubs?”
“We’ll bring them right back.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Come on, be real. I’m being honest.”
In the middle of this argument, the guy on the cell phone loudly tells someone that yeah, I’m trying to get you into the theater for free. Hang on. (Because we’re jerks, obviously.)
“We need our stubs. What if they check them?”
“It’s not even full. Come on, nobody is going to check.”
“No.”
And with that, we leave and pick out our seats. The theater is indeed not very full. I’d like to think it’s because most of the true fans were there at midnight or later on opening day while I was sleeping off a long day.
But I don’t know how a guy can say he’s being honest when he’s trying to scam the theater. Even if $10.50 is ridiculous. I don’t know how he thinks helping him do that is being real.
I also didn’t know what kind of identifying information might be left on the stub, because I paid by debit card. I am not going to hand something to a stranger for no reason. I am not going to help someone be a cheat. And besides, what if I wanted to keep my X-Files ticket stub?
Anyway, to the movie:
It was worth seeing, especially for a fan. It was good. It was suspenseful. I was just happy to get a movie, being the late fan that I am.
The criticisms I have read have sometimes mentioned that it tries to appeal to the wider audience and not just the true fan. You don’t need to know what black oil or the supersoldiers are. You don’t need to have hated the Cigarette Smoking Man (or laughed gleefully when the evil, evil man finally, hopefully bought it for good).
The thing is: who is going to watch an X-Files movies except for a true fan? After 9 seasons and one other movie?
There’s no alien abduction, no touching on any of the overarching themes of the series. It’s more like a long episode. I think the worst thing that I can say about this movie is that it might have shown more respect to fans to give them more of what they wanted, and less appealing to the masses. Worst part: David Duchovny in a beard. So grateful when it went away.
Throwing a bone fans: Scully and Mulder appear to be reuniting, but even at the end, it’s as ambiguous as their relationship always had been. And that’s good.
There are no answers. Just with the tagline, I want to believe, Scully and Mulder both struggle with their own versions of belief.
And I want to believe in the movie. I’m glad that there are no answers to good and evil, to pyschic or fraud. That’s how the series always went. And for anyone looking for answers, they should probably go stick their head in a toilet and then go watch a dumb movie.
Things I could’ve done without: eye candy younger agent with stupid yuppie name.
Someone I was glad to see: Skinner! And I can’t say this enough: Mulder minus beard.
Confession or correction: I liked Zoolander. But Will Ferrell was not the protagonist. And Zoolander was stupid. And it was redeemed by having Duchovny and David Bowie in it.
I haven’t seen it yet, but I hope to go soon. I watched the X-Files when it was still on TV, starting probably in ‘94 or ‘95. It was so good back then. I stopped watching it near the end, primarily because I no longer understood anything about what was going on. I didn’t even care anymore. The same thing has happened with the show “Lost.” You reach a point in these series where the overarching mystery is so overarching, you stop really caring about finding out “the truth.” The shows just drag on and on, tantalizing hint after tantalizing hint, until finally I just say “Enough!” Finish the show, tie up the loose ends, and move on.
Incidentally, if you want to see the origins of X-Files, go take a look at David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” sometime. That was a TV show from around 1990 or 1991 with an FBI agent investigating weird events in a small northwestern U.S. town. If anything, it was even more strange and ambiguous, which again was its downfall. I’ve tried watching it in recent years and haven’t been able to get into it. My experience has been these shows cannot sustain interest over the long haul.
As for Will Ferrel, I generally agree, but Taladega Nights was some funny shit. That Thanksgiving prayer–”Thank you little baby Jesus…”–still breaks me out in a fit every time I think about it. Plus that movie has Sasha Baron Cohen in it–you can’t go wrong if he’s in a comedy.
I did watch Twin Peaks when it came out, and I loved it at the time. However, I picked up season 1 a few years ago on DVD and it just didn’t have the same appeal. I haven’t rewatched the second season; I imagine it was probably weirder toward the end. And really, not sustainable.
X-Files had some really great stuff, and some ok stuff. Shows have a tendency to stay past their peaks. While Season 7 was past the peak of the series, they were still doing some good stuff.
And I will not have you defend Will Ferrell.
Seriously, I’m pretty picky about the comedies I watch; I can’t even tell you the last one I saw in the theater. Catching stuff on TV for free is less a waste of my time, and I can always stop watching.
“Stranger than Fiction” is another Will Ferrell movie you ought to give a chance. It has fewer scatological jokes and pratfalls and is darker. Seriously, his stuff isn’t all bad. I like some of his movies far better than any movie I ever saw with Jim Carrey in it.
I think the problem with the X-Files is that David Duchovny is a terrible actor. OK, haven’t seen the movie yet (but will today, I’ve been waiting for a good “set of tickets”), and was never that into the X-Files other than my brief catching up on reruns many years ago. Face it. Duchovny sucks at acting. He is painfully boring to watch. Did you see House of D? Yeah, he wrote, directed and starred in that steaming stinker. The only thing that was good about that movie was Robin Williams. Another good example, the video game XIII. Had that game on PS2 several years ago. It was unique for being a cel-shaded FPS based on French graphic novels. Duchovny did the voice acting for it, and once again - was painfully boring to listen to. The only thing I can honestly say I liked him in was Kalifornia.
Will Ferrell? Yeah he’s terrible too, but Semi-Pro wasn’t complete crap, and maybe only because of Woody Harrelson (did you see The Grand?).
Matt, OK, if I am ever bored I *might* watch Stranger Than Fiction. Might. By mentioning Jim Carrey, you’ve hit another actor I can’t stand. But unlike Will Ferrell, I actually will occasionally watch a Jim Carrey movie. But not a comedy. Never a comedy. (Eternal Sunshine, Truman Show, quite good)
And hey! No ripping on Duchovny! This is Duchovny-rip-free zone!
I have to disagree with you, AZB. I love him in the X-Files, and I think he’s a good actor in the show. I have not watched him in a lot of other stuff (and you, for some reason, are unreasonably attached to Kalifornia) so I can’t comment on his acting there. If I am ever super super bored, I might watch Evolution. Though I probably would watch it before Stranger Than Fiction.
I like Duchovny’s dry, sometimes sarcastic voice. I like his overly complicated X-Files dialogue with Gillian Anderson. So … there.
I fart in David Duchovny’s general direction!
But that’s not why I came back to comment.
Thanks, Matt, for the recommendation (even if it wasn’t meant for me). Stranger Than Fiction was a beautiful movie (just finished watching it), and as unhappy as I thought I’d be with Harold Crick’s fate at the end of the movie either way - I was quite pleased.
Melissa - watch it immediately. Don’t worry, its not a comedy (wish I could elaborate on it further). And while I don’t think Ferrell will ever do anything close to Carrey’s Eternal Sunshine, Stranger Than Fiction is good enough. Emma Thompson is in it too. I know you like her.
Hmph. I’ll give it a try. I have a backlog of movies I need to watch. Will Ferrell will be at the very bottom of the list.
David Duchovny = Awesome
You are so stubborn! Go on, rent Stranger than Fiction. I know you’ll like it. I tend to agree about Duchovny’s acting, by the way. He reminds me of Kyle McLaughlin, actually, to go back to the Twin Peaks thread. Both men are very one dimensional actors. I never feel like there’s a lot of depth of characterization there. But in their respective roles as one-dimensional FBI agents, they are both quite good.
Yes, I am stubborn! Ask AZB!
And you might get AZB back against you if you start talking shit about Twin Peaks. Go get him, AZB. I’d like to see you guys duke it out while I sit back and watch the attention be deflected from Duchovny.
And for the record: Kyle MacLachlan was not wooden either.