Preface: I realize that my review is almost three years late, but I can explain.  You see, after I saw FTF in the theatre (two times, BTW, both at the Cobb Place Eight cinemas in Kennesaw Georgia, on June 19 and 23, 1998, at 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.), I became content with the assumption that it was bad and that I didn’t like it.  However I was unable to pinpoint WHY I didn’t like it at the time.  In May of 1999, my good friend Luke asked my what I wanted for my rapidly approaching birthday.  I replied that I didn’t know; he asked me if I had a copy of TXF:FTF, to which I replied “No”.  Aghast, he said that this is what he would get me for my birthday.  I told him not to, because I had had plenty of opportunities in the past few months to purchase this video myself.  Then I told him that if he was set on getting that specific movie for me, to go to Blockbuster and buy a pre-viewed copy, because it wasn’t worth full price.  He said that he wouldn’t do that to me, and he bought me a Kurt Vonnegut book instead.  But just the other day, my cousin Jennifer sent me a gift card worth twenty dollars to Media Play.  Since there are no CDs or books that I want at the current time, I decided that maybe I was too hasty in my decision about the movie and what better way to spend the money than on TXF:FTF.  So I did.  Below is my review.
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“No for God’s sake, you’ve got it all backwards”.  ~ The Well-Manicured Man

The first time I saw it, I hated it.  The second, I disliked it.  Now, I say “ehhh…”

Why the sudden change of heart?  I dunno.

The first half of this movie was good.  It brought us Mulder and Scully investigating a possible bomb inside of a federal building in Dallas, Texas, banter between our daring duo, a cryptic but well-informed contact for Mulder, an autopsying Scully, a scary looking OPR inquest (with Skinner), and most importantly, a logical, practical, and believable motive for it all.

The second half brought us a completely nonsensical, mytharic slush-fest in which Chris Carter and presumably Frank Spotnitz try to satisfy all of their little boy explosion and alien fantasies, cleverly disguised and wrapped in a typical damsel in distress-knight in shinning armor story… oh, and their was something in their about Mulder and Scully… somewhere…

In the middle, we get a short Mulder dialog about how much Scully means to him, blah, blah, blah, and a near kiss (which although I am NOT a shipper, wouldn’t have minded too terribly seeing, sense it would’ve been natural and respectable).  I have to say at this point that I went to see the movie for the second time with my friend Taylor (a casual fan and shipper) who absolutely died when Scully was “stung by the bee”.  Of course, in typical XF fashion, something happens at the end of the scene that is totally unforeseen and changes the course of the episode/movie.

Anyway, FTF is nothing special.  It probably could’ve been done as a two-part episode in Sweeps, with less cussing of course.  I know that CC wanted us to see this as a grander scale and more telling production of a mythology fix, but I don’t view it like that.  It’s just a long episode to me.  We didn’t even get a mythology fix, really, because we were too busy explaining to the average moviegoer who these people were and what their roles are.  Mythology just would’ve confused them.  And who are 1013 trying to please?  The loyal and devout fans or the one-time-viewing movie audience?

Yep!  The one-time-viewing movie audience.

I’m sure that if you wanted to, you could make the movie a symbolic transformation of TXF from an awesome better-than-TV TV show, to your run-of-the-mill prime-time drama.  The first half was TXF, the second was FTF.  The middle would probably be condensed or omitted, due to time constraints.

Musings of a K.M.C.
- At the beginning of the video, CC said that everything would be explained in S6… did  miss something?
- So, those aliens must be pretty advanced if they had all this technology to get to other planets and such 36,000 years ago… then again, they haven’t progressed much since then…
- Alien blood = black oil?  That must be one of those things I missed in S6.
- Just how did the black oil survive in Texas for all those years and reemerge from that *surprisingly clean WHITE skull*… just were did the black oil hide?
- I am terrified of FEMA and the Hanta virus now.
- Just how did Mulder get to Antarctica?  And how did they get home?
- I’m confused about this: did the Well Manicured Man know about the bomb in the car?
- What about all of those other people who were infected with the same virus Scully was?  I didn’t expect Mulder to save them, but weren’t they reported missing by their families?  When and where were they exposed to the bees and/or virus?
- So at the end the X-Files are re-opened (which for some reason scares the sh*t out of Strunghold), and after wallowing around in their own filth for two+ years, Mulder and Scully and now Doggett pose a threat to these people and their project.  After pissing around for those 2+ years, the project is probably so far advanced now, M&S (&D) will never catch up!
- If Scully is has the sailor mouth, why does Mulder do all the cussing?
- DO YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH IS IN CHARGE OF SOMETHING (like TEXAS)!!!!  AND NOW HE’S OUR PRESIDENT!!!!

Rating(s):
TXF:  4 lounge chairs out of 5
FTF: 1 lounge chair out of 5
“The Middle”: 3 lounge chairs out of 5
Average: 2.6666666667

So much for our great show!

After my friend Lauren (who doesn’t know which one’s Mulder and which one’s Scully) saw the movie, I asked her what she thought of it.  She said “good”.  I asked if she understood everything or if anything was confusing, she said “kinda, I don’t understand the significance of the bees and corn… and who were those three guys standing over Mulder in the hospital?”.
I tried to explain, but I don’t think she paid attention.

“One man alone cannot fight the future” ~ Strunghold, speaking of Mulder, or maybe Al Gore