"The X Files: I Want to Believe"

It's been tough. Life after "Sex and the City" and "Mamma Mia!"

For weeks now, my wife has been walking around the house humming "Dancing Queen." It hits me about 2 in the morning. I lie there, staring at the ceiling while these words of immortal wisdom sear into my sleepless realm: "You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life. . ."

Finally now, a chance to return to those things that go bump in the night. Guy flicks!

I wanted to enjoy. I'm a fan of "The X Files" series. Even now, late at night, I find myself flipping over to a previously seen rerun. Pre-reality bliss. The show broke serious new ground back in its early days, before it turned, you know, pretentious.

Even when pretentious, though, it remained a decent journey, several episodes teetering on phenomenal. Gillian Anderson as cynical FBI Agent Scully and David Duchovny as Agent Mulder made geeks hip.

The series made the paranormal suitably creepy and entertaining.

So five years and one decent motion picture later, the first rumors of another major motion picture got many of us X-philes all atwitter. Something good enough to bring them back. Maybe The Lone Gunmen aren't really gone after all. Yes, something memorable, we thought.

The only question I have now is, Why?

Who thought (and that would undoubtedly be creator/producer Chris Carter) that we'd want to glean only trace elements of Mulder and Scully's life together all these years later? Where's the savage Bruce Willis/Cybil Shepherd floor roll? Where's the love? Why only wisps of back story? Why such gloom?

"The X Files: I Want to Believe" is about par with an average, underlit, late-vintage TV episode. It's very bleak, very serious—and skips many of the details most of our inquiring minds would really want to know.

Yeah, the plot's halfway decent—but I have another gripe. Once Mulder and Scully discover the true diabolical nature of What's Going On, the camera skips away, leaving our mind's eye to vaguely ponder the gruesome nature of the scheme.

C'mon, guys, this isn't tyketime TV! Outrage, I tell you! Flabbergast! I wanted nightmarequality, vintage "X-Files" shock value! And all I got was this lousy review.

"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor"

I wanted a mummy to remember. I'm a fan of Stephen Sommers' 1999 "The Mummy"—and even of its nifty sequel, "The Mummy Returns" (2001). Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) sparred nicely as unlikely cohorts, eventually married and bore a little Egyptologist of their own.

They were the perfect derringdo couple, happily married, reminiscent of Nick and Nora. Just that they had this certain little knack for upsetting the undead.

In "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" the O'Connells are retired and bored. And oh-so-slightly different. Rachel Weisz didn't return this time, reputedly citing "script problems." Ms. Weisz is a woman wise beyond her years. Maria Bello (the new Mrs. O'Connell) does well, even offering a nice tongue-in-cheek tribute to Weisz in one of the picture's rare moments of gifted wordplay.

Yes, there's trouble with the script; more precisely, there's a lack of coherent dialogue. Characters appear to be winging it— as 7yearolds on a school playground might do, pretending to be mummy-hunters.

Verbal sparring ranges from the painfully irrelevant to the painfully abysmal. For instance, here we are in China, battling an undead Chinese emperor and his about-to-be immortal army, and somebody decided to ratchet up the tension by having father/son squabbles? Good grief, guys— what about the hoards of undead soldiers? Shouldn't we stay focused? And can we speak of nothing beyond the painfully obvious?

Oh, by the way, if "The Mummy 3" had ripped off any more scenes from Indiana Jones lore, one might easily have called it "Indiana Jones vs. The Mummy." Really. We've got the whole of China to work with, and we can't get away from so much pre-owned material? What's up with that?

On the other hand, "The Mummy 3" is one of the prettiest action thrillers I've ever encountered. It's a terrific visual ride. Nothing wrong there. Just that, even though a picture's worth a thousand words, sometimes words are important too.