A between-seasons supplementary summer installment which, through its inflated scale and cost, calls into question the integrity and self-respect of the ongoing TV series. As on the small screen, David Duchovny's Mulder seems as awful as Gillian Anderson's Scully seems wonderful. The quest for the truth with this actor always appears to come second (or third) to the quest for a mirror or a good night's sleep. On the other hand, his co-star's operatic intensity provides major compensation, although she is in constant danger of looking a little slow on the uptake after five years of devout skepticism in the face of weekly manifestations of the paranormal. It therefore comes as a major loss when Scully drops out of the action for a long stretch after getting stung by an Africanized honeybee who has stowed away in her shoulder pads from Texas to Washington, D.C., and has waited to strike until the precise moment of the excruciatingly postponed First Kiss. The scene in which the bee hops aboard -- the nocturnal exploration of two illuminated domes at the edge of an inexplicable cornfield in the Southwest desert -- is a pretty decent suspense sequence. And the James Bond-ian climax -- the invasion of and escape from an underground fortress in Antarctica -- is pretty exciting, especially the sight of our platonic FBI partners trying to outrun the spreading crevasses in the snow. But there are irritations here too. The obstinate skeptic is unable to lift her nose out of the snow to witness the island-sized UFO overhead, but as soon as it is safely out of view she is ministering energetically to the suddenly collapsed believer. And how they get out of that godforsaken place with only a fuel-less Caterpillar at their disposal is as big a mystery as any in the movie. Directed by Rob Bowman. (1998) — Duncan Shepherd
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